In poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, the political rhetoric touched a new low on Monday.
At an election rally in Uttar Pradesh's Rae Bareli, Samajwadi Party chief and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav took a cheeky dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Yadav asked Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan, who has been the brand ambassador of Gujarat tourism for a long period now to stop promoting the 'donkeys of Gujarat.'
"Ek gadhe ka vigyapan aata hai, main iss sadi ke sabse bade mahanayak se kahunge ke ab aap Gujarat ke gadhon ka prachar mat kariye (There's an ad on TV which shows donkeys. I appeal to century's biggest star...please stop endorsing donkeys of Gujarat)," Akhilesh said referring to one Gujarat Tourism TV advertisement.
The ad features the superstar inviting tourists to visit the Wild Ass Sanctuary located in Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat.
Shivam Vij writes in this article why it's difficult to read this Uttar Pradesh election. Apparently, in the absence of a perceptible wave there's only one metric to understand voter behaviour: caste.
"But there's a lot more than caste going on in this election. If even a handful of Jatavs can vote for a BJP candidate for Ram Mandir, if even a handful of Baniyas can vote for the Yadav-Muslim party that is the SP, it tells you that the measuring scale of caste is broken," Vij writes.
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