Samajwadi Party Upbeat About Election Prospect

Javed Akhtar, Arab News

Azam Khan JEDDAH, 27 September 2006 — Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, the present chief minister of the northern Uttar Pradesh state, will be the next prime minister of India, according to one of his close aides. Azam Khan, the parliamentary affairs and urban development minister in Mulayam’s Cabinet, made the prediction when he was asked if the SP leader would retain his position as chief minister after the next elections. “Not just the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Mulayam Singh will be the next prime minister of India,” Azam told Arab News in an interview on Monday. When asked on what basis he was making this assertion, Azam replied: “My confidence is based on the fact that our party has become the single largest party in the Rajya Sabha. We have overtaken even the left (communist) parties.” He said the secret of SP’s success was the work it was doing for the benefit of the people. “Our philosophy has been that our work will speak for us,” Azam added. “UP is the biggest state in the country and if we do well there, we will do well in the center.” Azam said elections in the state were due in May but are likely to be held earlier, around January or February. “We will fight the elections with our coalition partners Rashtriya Lok Dal (of Ajit Singh) and I am confident that we will do well,” he said. When asked about the strategies likely to be used by others like the Congress party or the Bahujan Samaj Party of Mayawati, Azam replied: “It is the question of survival of each party and they will try and adopt a strategy that will be beneficial to them and will help them to do well.” Asked to list the achievements of his party during its rule, Azam said: “In 170 million families and households, at least one person from each family has benefited from our schemes. Scholarships are being given to girls after intermediate level. This has been extended to private colleges as well and they have already started getting 500 rupees each. There is also a pension scheme for senior citizens.” Azam said a big achievement of his party was the creation of new jobs. “This was in our manifesto and we have successfully implemented this. New jobs include jobs for Urdu teachers in schools,” he added. Another significant achievement of the SP government has been the introduction of technological education and training in madrasas. “We have started industrial training institutes in madrasas. This will train and prepare Muslim boys to take up technological jobs when they finish their education,” Azam said. Azam is a man with a mission. He used the opportunity at an iftar party here to acquaint a select gathering of Indians with his ambitious project of Mohammad Ali Jauhar University in Rampur in western Uttar Pradesh. He narrated the various difficulties at different stages that he has had to encounter to finally get the governor’s approval to the act passed by the state assembly. “This should get into the Guinness Book of World Records that two acts were passed by an assembly for one university. It is also a record that within four months of the foundation stone being laid, the university will be inaugurated,” Azam said of the 7.5-billion-rupees ($163.5-million) project on a sprawling 250 acre plot. He said the problems faced by the Aligarh Muslim University in retaining its minority character have helped in formulating the act for this university so that it did not face similar problems. Nadeem Tarin, a Riyadh-based Indian businessman, said he was amazed at the speed of construction work being done at the university campus. “After over 130 years of AMU’s establishment, someone has been inspired to set up another university. I hope Azam Khan will inspire someone else to set up another such institution in five or 10 years,” Tarin said.