Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh’s main opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) is on the verge of a split with Shivpal Yadav, a former state minister, announcing on Friday that party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav will head a new outfit called the Samajwadi Secular Morcha.
“For social justice, Samajwadi Secular Morcha will be formed. Netaji (Mulayam) will be its national president,” Shivpal told reporters in Etawah on Friday. The announcement came soon after his meeting with Mulayam.
Shivpal, who is Mulayam’s brother, had threatened to float a separate political party after the assembly election debacle in March this year—when the party could manage only 47 seats out of the total 403—if Akhilesh Yadav, SP president, did not reinstate Mulayam as chief in three months.
Even as Shivpal has yet again raised the banner of rebellion within SP, senior leaders feel that Akhilesh is in total control of the party and there is no question of him ceding the reins.
“The Uttar Pradesh assembly election was a shift in the party’s politics because for the first time Akhilesh Yadav decided on ticket distribution and all the other election-related decisions. Akhilesh enjoys the loyalty of all the sitting MLAs of SP. We want to wait for the official statement of Mulayam Singh Yadav. He hasn’t spoken about the Samajwadi Secular Morcha announced by Shivpal Yadav,” said a senior SP leader, who did not wish to be named.
This is not the first time that a rift within the Yadav family has turned into a political battle between Akhilesh and his uncle Shivpal. In a similar power tussle in March, Mulayam had tried to host a dinner for all the 47 MLAs but cancelled it after it emerged that MLAs were not keen to attend.
“The split in Samajwadi Party is only a formality. The shift in the party leadership has already taken place and it is now only a matter of time before Shivpal Yadav starts his own political party,” the leader cited above added.
The SP witnessed a bitter feud between Shivpal and Akhilesh in the run-up to the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls. The differences surfaced after Shivpal replaced Akhilesh as the state unit chief following which the latter, who was then the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, removed his uncle from the state cabinet.
Just two months before the assembly election, the SP national executive announced Akhilesh as the chief of the party while his father Mulayam was named mentor.
The Election Commission (EC) in January allotted the name “Samajwadi Party” and the “bicycle” symbol to the faction led by Akhilesh Yadav. The EC, in its order, said that Akhilesh enjoys overwhelming majority support, and the group led by him is the Samajwadi Party and is entitled to use its symbol.
(PTI contributed to the story)