Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav assumed the mantle of the national president of the Samajwadi Party on Monday.
UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav arrives for a meeting at his Lucknow residence on Monday. (Deepak Gupta / HT Photo)
He summoned the party’s new state chief, Naresh Uttam, and asked him to constitute the state executive in a week and get it ratified from him.
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Akhilesh was appointed national president of the party during the emergency national convention organised in Lucknow on Sunday. Akhilesh’s uncle and SP’s Rajya Sabha member, Ramgopal Yadav, had summoned the historic meeting.
Sources said Uttam may revoke the expulsion of many youth leaders whom Shivpal had earlier expelled from the party.
Akhilesh also held a meeting of party legislators at his official residence at 11am and asked them to go to their constituencies and start campaigning for the upcoming elections. He also warned them not to speak ill of party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.
“He (Akhilesh) told us that ‘netaji’ (Mulayam) is ours, and we should go to the polls invoking his name. We will gift him a second successive majority government of SP,” said Atraulia MLA, Sangram Singh, quoting Akhilesh.
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The CM also held meetings of youth wings. Sources said the confusion in the party’s youth wings and state wings, “triggered by the former state president”, would be set right in the next few weeks.
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The CM also held meetings of youth wings. Sources said the confusion in the party’s youth wings and state wings, “triggered by the former state president”, would be set right in the next few weeks.
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All SP MLAs have been camping in Lucknow since December 21. They had come here to attend the winter session of the UP Assembly but could not return to their constituencies as they were holding meetings either among themselves or with the CM.
Pankaj Jaiswal is Bureau Chief, Uttar Pradesh. He covers-analyses politics, and assists Hindustan Times reporters across the state. He has 30 years of experience in print media reporting. Based in Lucknow, he started his journalism career at a national English daily in Kanpur after graduating from Christ Church College. He joined Hindustan Times, Lucknow edition, as part of the launch team in 1997. He’s covered everything from rural distress to science, environment, wildlife, and crime. He has travelled extensively in Uttar Pradesh for rural, development, political, and election reporting. His continued interest in rural issues, rural distress, and development journalism has fetched him a handful of prestigious awards and fellowships. Pankaj is a photojournalist too. He clinched the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting—First Prize in 2009 and Third Prize in 2006—for exposing Bundelkhand’s devastating drought and distress: crop failures, farm suicides, migration, debt, and the injustice of meagre compensation cheques between Rs 10 and Rs 20 to farmers by the government from crop loss. He also has been awarded with Hindustan Times internal 'Journalist of the Month' citation over half a dozen times. His relentless reporting in Hindustan Times pulled the Bundelkhand crisis out of obscurity and forced it into the national spotlight, prompting media and government action on one of India’s most neglected regions. Over a decade, he filed hundreds of hard-hitting stories, travelling repeatedly from Lucknow deep into Bundelkhand. He also received the Special Mention KC Kulish International Award 2009. Pankaj also did long-haul political reporting on the most intense political family feud—’The Yadav Family Feud’—between 2016 and 2022.
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