New Delhi: The last few months have not been kind to Shivpal Singh Yadav, uncle of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, and brother of Mulayam Singh Yadav; with his fortunes taking a nose dive, perhaps never to recover.
From holding nine portfolios in the Akhilesh Yadav-led government to being sacked from his cabinet and also as the Samajwadi Party (SP) chief, Shivpal was at the centre of an epic family drama which played out over national television. There was even a possibility that Mulayam Singh along with Shivpal Yadav would have formed a new party.
Widely viewed as representative of everything which is wrong with Samajwadi brand of politics, his website bio describes him as “an honored human being” and “a maverick socialist”.
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This maverick behaviour was on full display when Shivpal threatened to launch a separate party after the polls. In a reflection of his relationship with Akhilesh reaching a nadir, Shivpal who contested the assembly election as the SP candidate from Jaswantnagar constituency in Etawah, said he would have fought as an independent had SP not given him a ticket.
“You can insult me, sack me but I have also done good work for the party and will continue working for it. A post doesn’t make a person big, one should have the spirit of making sacrifices. Netaji (Mulayam Singh) consolidated the party and I will not tolerate his insult,” Shivpal said at SP’s silver jubilee celebrations in Lucknow on 5 November in his diatribe against Akhilesh.
Shivpal, popularly referred to as chacha or uncle, is a physical education graduate from Lucknow University’s Lucknow Christian College, and has the reputation of a strongman.
“Shivpal is an unsavoury element. He believes in that old Mulayam Singh’s way of mafia politics. He moves around in a cavalcade of vehicles. People are scared of him,” said a New Delhi-based political analyst requesting anonymity.
It was a dispute over who gets to have a bigger say in the ticket distribution process for the ongoing assembly polls which had triggered a rift in the Yadav family, sparking a power struggle between Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh, who was supported by his brother, Shivpal Yadav.
After Shivpal Yadav was made the party’ state president last year, replacing the chief minister, the party saw a series of sackings and counter-sackings by both the camps.
However, with the majority of the party on his side, Akhilesh Yadav became national president of the party, replacing his father. Shivpal Yadav was expelled from SP at the party’s national convention on 1 January.
Perhaps this sentence under the political career section of his website was prescient of the drama which unfolded—“The word samajwadi will always sound incomplete without the mention of his name.”
Shivpal seems to have Sadhna Yadav, wife of party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, on his side.
Speaking a day before the final phase of voting in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday, Sadhna Yadav suggested that Shivpal Yadav hasn’t been treated fairly.
With Akhilesh Yadav gambling all in his audacious political coup against his father and founder of the Samajwadi Party, Mulayam Singh Yadav, a failure to win his re-election bid would be disastrous and provide some solace to Shivpal Yadav, who is trying to find his way in the political wilderness.
