The Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP), which has suffered defeats in four straight elections despite establishing fresh alliances, is carefully preparing for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, making pilgrimages to holy sites.

Recently, the party held training camps in Lakhimpur and Sitapur where Akhilesh and all other key officials gave speeches to the crowd in order to convey the party’s message to its members. The SP leader offered aarti at Naimisharanya, a well-known Hindu pilgrimage in the Sitapur district, and made fun of the governing BJP, which frequently accuses the SP of towing a “soft Hindutva” line.

“Hum bahut soft hain hum log pehle se. Zaroorat bas ab hard hone ki hai. Yeh soft ka mamla chalne wala nahin hai (We needed to become hard since we were already so soft. This gentleness won’t help),” Akhilesh declared. 

Since SP officials have avoided going to the Ayodhya Ram temple while it is still being built, it appears that the party is also prepared to embrace the Hindu God totally. Shivpal Singh Yadav, general secretary of the SP, presented a bronze statue of Ram on Saturday at Ramlila Tiraha in Jaswant Nagar, his assembly district in the Etawah district. “Ram sabke hain (Ram belongs to all),” stated Shivpal during the aarti of the idol that Jaswant Nagar Palika had installed.

After a long absence, SP is again hosting training camps for its employees. Akhilesh’s Lok Jagran Yatra will pass through each of the 80 Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh where these camps will be organised. 

Akhilesh launched the Lok Jagran Yatra earlier this month from Lakhimpur with the slogans of “samajik nyay” and “jaatiya jan ganana” (social justice and caste census), focusing on OBC voters. This was very similar to the “Samajwadi Vijay Yatra” he held prior to the 2022 Assembly elections, in which the SP significantly increased its tally.

Akhilesh called for an end to groupthink during a gathering of employees on Thursday at the SP state headquarters in Lucknow. He advised them to prepare for the elections with “ek jutata, nishtha, imaandari (unity, dedication and honesty). 

It has finished compiling data on the performance of MPs from competing parties on each seat as part of its poll strategy of constituency-specific plans, and it has gotten input from its district presidents on the strengths and weaknesses of its organisational structure.

To discuss each seat, Akhilesh personally meets with district organisational units, but for the first time, there are also specific in-charges for each Lok Sabha constituency. Party officials said that inactive employees had been eliminated and new “zonal units” had been established.

“Names of SP supporters were discovered to be missing from electoral records in previous elections, including by-elections in which the SP lost to the BJP. To beat the SP, the BJP abused its authority. The responsible parties shall monitor changes to the electoral rolls to make sure that all eligible voters are added to the list,” a party leader said. 

The SP ran in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in coalition with the BSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. The SP had only gained five seats, compared to the BSP’s ten. Due to recent by-election losses to the BJP in Rampur and Azamgarh, the SP currently only has three MPs in the Lok Sabha.