Will have to start my election campaign on my own, without waiting for anyone: Akhilesh

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has said in an interview with a newspaper that in the present scenario, he may not wait for anyone to start campaigning for the 2017 assembly elections. He also added that he may be cornered but can’t be defeated.

"When I was a child, there was no one to name me. In the same way, I think I will have to start my election campaign on my own, without waiting for anyone. I am not being pompous. But, just like a perfect batsman whose runs flow from his bat and create records, my unprecedented development work will ensure my return to power” he told a newspaper.

This development comes out on the backdrop of open war that broke out in Uttar Pradesh's ruling Samajwadi Party with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav stripping his uncle Shivpal Yadav of key ministerial portfolios, hours after his removal as the party's state unit chief and appointment of the latter in his place.

Also read: Akhilesh vs Shivpal: All out war breaks out in SP ahead of UP polls, Shivpal says ready to fight elections under Mulayam

Sharp differences in the Yadav family came out into the open when as Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav shunted Chief Secretary Deepak Singhal, considered close to Shivpal, barely two months after his appointment, setting off a chain of developments that saw SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav ousting his son as state party chief and replacing him with Shivpal.

Hours after Mulayam made his brother and senior cabinet minister the UP unit head of the ruling party, in an angry retort, Akhilesh clipped his uncle's wings by stripping him of the plum PWD, irrigation and cooopetative portfolios.