UP polls 2017: Campaigning at its peak but not for Mulayam Singh Yadav

Lucknow: Electioneering is at its peak in UP but not for Mulayam Singh Yadav.

For the first time in his fivedecade long political career, the SP patriarch is spending most of his time at home, tracking on TV election news and coverage of son Akhilesh's campaign. He's no longer in chartered planes and choppers criss-crossing the state as he did till the 2012 assembly polls.

Same goes for younger brother Shivpal, once the party number two till he was pushed out of the post of SP state president during nephew Akhilesh's recent coup.

After 20 days of campaigning in Jaswantnagar, where he's the party candidate, he too is “resting“ at his Lucknow home, after his constituency voted on February 19. “It's been hectic and I'll spend some time with my family ,“ Shivpal told TOI adding he was yet to decide if he'd campaign for SP in the coming days. “I'll do whatever `Netaji' (Mulayam) and the party tell me to, but I won't canvass for Congress nominees or the alliance,“ he says.

Mulayam, who openly rejected the SP-Congress tie-up days after the pact was announced here, was wary of campaigning for the alliance too, say insiders. “This is why nominees aren't requesting his presence at public meetings,“ a senior SP neta said.

This time Mulayam addressed only two rallies in Jaswantnagar while campaigning for Shivpal and one for younger son Prateek's wife Aparna, party nominee from Lucknow Cantonment.

He was scheduled to campaign for Amethi candidate Gayatri Prajapati on Thursday but pulled out Wednesday night. A Mulayam loyalist, Gayatri recently hit headlines when he was booked in a rape case on Supreme Court's directions.With the opposition tearing into the SP over the issue, Mulayam, it is learnt, opted to stay away from Gayatri's campaign for good.

In the 2012 polls Mulayam addressed more than 300 rallies. But in 2014 LS polls had limited it to 18 rallies, one in each of the 18 divisions of the state, citing health issues.

This is perhaps the first election ever since the 1992 SP victory that the party founder is waiting for an invitation to address meetings. “Ab bahut kum log aate hain `Netaji' se milne (These days very few came to meet netaji),“ says an aide of the party patriarch as he walks out of Mulayam's bungalow on Vikramaditya Marg. The story is the same at Shivpal Yadav's house nearby .