Your father, the late Akhilesh Singh, was a five-time Congress MLA. You won the Raebareli seat on a Congress ticket. Why did you leave the party?
Just one term: leadership crisis. You are the sum total of the 10 closest [people]. You must surround yourself with a solid team that gives you the right feedback. It’s time to reform and to keep one’s ear to the ground. Certainly, these people are not doing that.
Not long back, you were considered very close to Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi. What changed?
A lot of that had to do with lack of implementation. If something is not right, you report to your leader about it. But if you keep hearing, ‘theek hai, karenge (alright, will do the needful)’, and yet nothing happens on the ground despite several discussions, it harms not just your image in front of your people but also the party as a whole. This is not how you want things to happen.
Do you want to talk about any specific incident?
Yes, this was around the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and I told the leadership that it was a very, very important election for the party, so why don’t we organise baithaks (meetings) with the gram pradhan, panchayat sadasya, block pramukhs and others as this would set the right image. This way we would hear them out and they would get due respect. Even though they said it was a very good idea and that they would do so, nothing was done and the results are in front of us. I am not saying we lost because of this one reason but it is the complacency in general that is the problem.
What is your advice to Priyanka Gandhi who is fighting the polls with the ‘ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon’ slogan?
Stop sloganeering and surround yourself with good people who can give you honest feedback on ground reality. Stop this jumlabaazi (sloganeering) that you would give free laptops and scooty in UP if you come to power. Yours is not a regional party; it is ruling in other states. Why can’t you deliver there what you are promising to do in UP? Why can’t you give free laptops in Rajasthan or Punjab, to begin with? What is holding you back? They should walk the talk and stop fooling others. They are the key opposition party. In fact, they won three states back to back — Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan — in 2018. So they can’t say they don’t have public support. About giving 40% tickets to women and empowering women in general — why can’t they make a start in Punjab? Again, in the recent Rajasthan reshuffle, how many women got cabinet berths? These things really bother me.
What will be your key priorities for Raebareli if you fight again from there?
We have done a lot of work in terms of infrastructure: we have good roads, AIIMS and schools but my main focus will be to have a university. Roads banenge tutenge, hand pumps lagenga kharab honge (roads and hand pumps will get built and be broken) but a university will make Raebareli an education hub as it is very close to Lucknow and Allahabad.
Who will be your main opponent in Raebareli?
It could be the SP or the BSP; I don’t think Congress will put up any fight.
Do you see Akhilesh Yadav’s SP putting up a strong fight in the upcoming polls?
I don’t think so. The BJP is going very strong. We will be repeating the 2017 results and should win 350-plus seats.
You are married to a Congress MLA (Angad Singh) from Punjab. Do you think this will affect your political career, now that you are part of the BJP?
I don’t think so. This is a very good example of a modern, democratic India. Everyone says BJP is not a party for women. But please don’t forget they welcomed a woman married to a Congress MLA. Think of how openminded they were about me. It was a very cool thing on their part as they saw that my career has nothing to do with my personal choices
Do you think BJP has done enough to promote women leaders in Uttar Pradesh?
In the 2017 UP elections, BJP gave the maximum number of tickets to women and had the most number of women MLAs. Look at Amethi. (Union minister and Amethi MP) Smritiji (Irani) is not from that place. If they had to get a leader from outside, it could have been anyone else — (Nitin) Gadkariji or Amit Shahji — but they believed in a woman and she won. And this wasn’t an instance of a woman fighting another woman such as Sonia Gandhi. This is how this party sees and promotes women.
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