Banners projecting Akhilesh Yadav as “future Prime Minister” were put up in Lucknow on Monday, the move threatening to deepen the bitterness between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh in the run-up to next year’s general election.

Released by state Samajwadi spokesperson Fakhrul Hasan Chaand, the banners said in Hindi: “Heartiest congratulations to respected Sri Akhilesh Yadavji, future Prime Minister of the country, on his birthday.”

Chaand told The Telegraph: “Although Akhilesh’s date of birth is July 1, we are celebrating it today out of love for him.”

The Congress and the Samajwadi Party are part of the Opposition bloc INDIA, formed to challenge the Narendra Modi government in the 2024 parliamentary elections.

“The INDIA bloc doesn’t have a prime ministerial face, and so we want them to project Akhilesh as one,” Chaand told this newspaper at the gates of the Samajwadi headquarters.

“The Samajwadi Party is in a position to defeat the BJP from all the 80 parliamentary seats in Uttar Pradesh and stop the party from forming the government at the Centre in 2024. The entire country wants to see Akhilesh as Prime Minister.”

Samajwadi insiders claimed the banners had been put up in retaliation to Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Rai’s reiteration that his party was ready to contest from all the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

“We are preparing to field our candidates from all the seats in Uttar Pradesh,” Rai had reaffirmed before party workers in Lucknow on Sunday.

He had first said this on October 18, and Akhilesh had reacted the next day by declaring that “chirkut” (insignificant) leaders should refrain from making such comments.

Akhilesh had added that the Samajwadi Party would not share seats with the
Congress in Uttar Pradesh if the Congress failed to give it a few seats in the upcoming Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh.

Asked to comment on this statement, Madhya Pradesh Congress leader Kamal Nath had told reporters in Bhopal on October 19: “Forget Akhilesh, we are going to form the government here on our own.”

Furious at this remark, Samajwadi general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav said on October 21, without mentioning names: “I want to say that he is a chhutbaiya (small-time) leader from Madhya Pradesh.”

Most political observers believe that any seat-sharing arrangement between the Samajwadis and the Congress in Uttar Pradesh for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls would be a daunting task.

Congress working committee member Shashi Tharoor said in Thiruvananthapuram last week that his party would be likely to push for Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge or Rahul Gandhi to be made Prime Minister if the INDIA bloc won in 2024.

“I think that once the result comes out, then, because it’s a coalition and not one party, the leaders of those parties will have to get together and pick someone,” Tharoor said.

“But my guess is that from the Congress party, it’s going to be either Mr Kharge, who then will be the first Dalit Prime Minister of India, or Rahul Gandhi, since in very many ways it (the Congress) is a family-run party.”