Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday announced an alliance with his estranged uncle Shivpal Yadav’s party for the upcoming assembly elections, attempting to bring the curtain down on a family feud that erupted five years ago over control of the party.
Akhilesh told reporters that the party will work together to bring Shivpal into the alliance on SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav’s birthday on November 22. Shivpal, SP MLA from Jaswantnagar (Etawah), is Mulayam’s younger brother.
“It has been the endeavour of the Samajwadi Party to stitch an alliance with smaller parties. Naturally, we are going to forge an alliance with Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia (PSP-L), the party of uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav as well. The SP will give him full respect,” Ahilesh told reporters.
“Many small parties have joined hands with us. Recently, Om Prakash Rajbhar (president of Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party) held a historic programme in Mau and allied with the SP,” he added.
When asked whether the PSP-L will merge with the SP, Akhilesh said: “Alliance, not merger.”
This is the first indication of a rapprochement in the first family of the SP since Shivpal left it in 2018.
{{/usCountry}}This is the first indication of a rapprochement in the first family of the SP since Shivpal left it in 2018.
{{/usCountry}}Shivpal served as public works department and irrigation minister in Akhilesh’s government before the two fellout in August 2016 over control of the SP. After Akhilesh took over the reins of the party from Mulayam Singh Yadav in 2017, Shivpal broke away from the SP and floated his own party in 2018.
In the 2017 assembly polls, the SP suffered big losses, slipping to 47 from 224 seats in 2012. The family feud was considered to be one of the causes of the party’s bad showing at the hustings.
Shivpal always projected himself as the lieutenant of Mulayam Singh Yadav, claiming he had worked very hard with the SP founder in building the party since its inception in 1992. He was always known for his organisational skills in the party. He also had a powerful role in the party and was often referred to as the de facto chief minister, till Akhilesh became the chief minister in 2012.
However in 2016, an internal conflict emerged between Shivpal and his nephew and intensified to a point where Mulayam Singh Yadav replaced Akhilesh and appointed Shivpal as the state unit chief.
Akhilesh retaliated by dismissing Shivpal from the state cabinet.
A couple of months later, Mulayam (as national president of SP) expelled Akhilesh and SP national general secretary Ramgopal Yadav from the party for six years only to revoke the decision a couple of days later.
Eventually on January 2017, at an emergency national convention of the party, Akhilesh was elected the national president of the party and Mulayam was named the chief patron.
Shivpal contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections against SP candidate and then sitting MP Akshay Yadav from Firozabad. However, both parties lost the seat to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Since 2018, Shivpal had been trying to stitch an alliance with the Opposition but Akhilesh remained non-committal on the matter. “We had been saying that like-minded socialists should come together. Whenever socialists have come together, they have won the elections,” PSP-L leader Deepak Mishra said.
HT tried to reach out to Shivpal for a comment but could not get one immediately.
“We had been saying that like-minded socialists should come together. Whenever socialists have come together, they won elections,” Deepak Mishra, a PSP-L leader, said.
“A family uniting is good news. We want families to remain united. But, with SP lawmakers and leaders eyeing to enter BJP, the big question is if the SP would remain united under its Jinnah-loving party head,” BJP spokesperson Harish Srivastava said.
Political analyst and former head of Political Science department of Lucknow University, Prof SK Dwivedi, said: “I had always said that it is important for the SP to ally with Shivpal. Ending the acrimony would not only send a good signal to voters but also help SP. Shivpal many have not won any seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, but if he contests the 2022 polls without SP, then even if he fares badly, it would harm the SP as the vote banks of both SP and PSP-L are common. I always said that now that Akhilesh is the national president of the party, he should be generous to Shivpal.”
Meanwhile, Akhilesh hit out at chief minister Yogi Adityanath over his remarks that the former should issue an apology for comparing Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel with Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
“The BJP engages in the politics of hatred. It is always on the lookout for such chances. They do not talk about unemployment and development,” Akhilesh said.
At a public meeting in Hardoi on Sunday, Akhilesh had said that “Sardar Patel, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah studied in the same institute and became barristers. They helped [India] get freedom and never backed away from any struggle.”
The speech came on the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhai Patel, independent India’s first home minister and the man who united the country by convincing the princely states to merge with the Union of India. Unlike the other three who studied law at the Inner Temple, Patel studied at the Middle Temple.
In response, Adityanath said the comment smacked of “Talibani mentality, which the people of the country and Uttar Pradesh will not tolerate”.
On the chief minister’s proposed visit to Etawah on November 6, Akhilesh said: “Maybe he (Yogi Adityanath) is visiting Etawah to inaugurate some of the works that our government has done. He does not have any work of his to showcase. When he comes here, ask him what significant work he did.”