PSP-L merges with SP: Akhilesh, Shivpal reunite

The merger came amid his nephew SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav’s emphatic victory in the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat bypoll by over 280,000 votes.

KANPUR: The Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohiya) (PSPL) founder Shivpal Yadav announced the merger of his party with the Samajwadi Party (SP) at SS Memorial Inter College in Saifai, the Yadav family’s ancestral village, on Thursday

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and wife Dimple Yadav with Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party Lohia president Shivpal Singh Yadav and his son Aditya Yadav during a meeting, in Mainpuri. (PTI)

The merger came amid his nephew SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav’s emphatic victory in the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat bypoll by over 280,000 votes.

“We have merged the PSPL with the SP. I was waiting for the right time. We will unitedly contest all the elections–be it civic bodies’ polls or the Lok Sabha election, there will be an SP flag on the car,” Shivpal said.

Following the announcement about the merger, the PSPL’s flag was also brought down from the party office. “This is a new change of samajwad (socialism). There were misunderstandings between the two leaders, which have now been cleared. From now on, it will be a fight between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and SP,” PSPL’s chief spokesman Deepak Mishra told a news agency.

After falling out with Akhilesh ahead of the 2017 assembly elections, this is the second time Shivpal has joined hands with him. He had allied with the SP for the assembly elections in 2022, and taken out a ‘Janrath Yatra’ to mobilise voters. But the alliance ended with the elections.

For the last six years, speculations were rife whether Shivpal would ally with the BJP or the SP. The demise of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav reduced Shivpal’s political options, and ahead of the Mainpuri bypoll, he showed a clear preference for family, said political observers.