A year ago, he had kindled the flame of hope in the realms of despair.
A year later, hope burns bright but the light has dimmed slightly.
For UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, who completes a year in office on Friday, it has been a tough year. He has fulfilled the hopes and aspirations of the youth and also the promises that he made when he led his party’s campaign in the Assembly elections.
From unemployment allowance, to laptops for students, to Kanya Vidya Dhan Yojana to scholarships for Muslim girls — he has translated the dre-ams into reality. A large part of the Samajwadi Party manifesto has been fulfilled in the first year of the Akhilesh government and this, in itself, is no mean achievement.
While these schemes have brought in bouquets for the youngest chief minister, the brickbats are coming in from an unexpected quarter — his own party.
The chief minister, who is also the Samajwadi state president, has been grappling with the problem of indiscipline among party cadres since the day he was sworn in.
Party workers, revelling in the power, have turned into rule breakers with a vengeance. From flaunting their status through party flags on cars, gate-crashing into private functions to which their leaders are invited and throwing their weight in the government offices, the Samajwadi Party has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The stern warnings issued from time to time by the chief minister are apparently having little impact on the cadres.
This indiscipline within the party is also major cause for the deteriorating law and order situation. The police have been at the receiving end in the Samajwadi regime— be it the murder of a sub inspector inside a police station in Kanpur or the killing of DSP in Pratapgarh— and as a result, the morale of the men in khaki is at an all-time low.
With law and order sliding down, the communal forces have also been raising their head at regular intervals and according to the government’s own admission , 27 incidents of communal violence have taken place in UP in the past one year.
The chief minister has not been able to firm up his hold on the bureaucracy and this creates an impression of total lack of governance. Majority of the officers have been handpicked by SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and these officers do not accept the authority of the chief minister.
Besides, multiple power centres in the government have been the bane of the Akhilesh Yadav government. It has been a classic case of too many cooks spoiling the broth and then pinning the blame on the youngest of them all.