UP elections 2017: Volunteers fan out with personal letter from Akhilesh Yadav

Team Udayavani, Feb 25, 2017, 9:44 AM IST

Lucknow: As leaders of all major parties are channelising their energies in campaigning for the last three phases of polling in Uttar Pradesh, an army of volunteers from SP and Congress is reaching out to voters with a personal letter from Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

Armed with campaign material and dressed in white T-shirts that read ‘phir se Akhilesh’ and ‘UP ko ye saath pasand hai’, these volunteers are reaching out to voters and households across the districts which are slated to go to polls.

The volunteers carry with them the alliances’ 10 key priorities – Pragati ke Das Kadam, pictures of Akhilesh and Rahul with the ‘UP ko yeh saath pasand hai’ slogan and a pocket calendar, besides a personalised message from Akhilesh Yadav.

Said to be the brainchild of Congress’ election strategist Prashant Kishor’s team, around 70-100 volunteers per assembly constituency visit upto 5 lakh homes daily, in a bid to give a personal touch to the electioneering.

Elections for UP Legislative Assembly are being held in seven phases with three more to follow on February 27, March 4 and 8. The results will be out on March 11.

Interestingly, the letter signed by Mr Yadav is printed on a sheet of paper which has a band of SP and Congress colours running across it. In the letter, the Chief Minister expresses confidence that people would give him a second chance for taking forward the work initiated by his government.

“We initiated several works in the past five years for development and also got success in many schemes but there still remains a long way to go…a big structure has to be built on the foundations laid and it is important that this vikas ki yatra is not slowed down,” he states in the letter titled ‘Akhilesh ka sandesh’.

“We want to bring the state in the category of most developed states for which works have been done speedingly and now we have also got the support of Congress and Rahulji which will give it more momentum,” Mr Yadav has stated adding he has confidence that people will support the alliance.