Post polls, Mulayam camp begins pariwar 2.0
LUCKNOW: It may not be intense yet, but Yadav family feud 2.0 seems to have commenced. The two camps were maintaining a stoic silence after the miserable defeat in the recent assembly elections, but the poll outcome had made it clear that the SP national president Akhilesh Yadav, to start with, will have to face rough weather at least within the family.
Even as the ambient temperature in Uttar Pradesh has risen drastically, the Mulayam-Shivpal camp has started turning the heat on Akhilesh.
When the party lost the polls, Mulayam said, “No one person could be held responsible for the defeat.” He tried to veil his brother Shivpal Yadav's result day statement in which the latter had said that it was not SP's loss, Akhilesh’s ego suffered the defeat. While the party lost, Shivpal won. He also won his Mainpuri seat by a margin of 50,000 votes. Shivpal’s victory was single-handed as the party had not supported him.
After the result day, Shivpal stopped making any comments and seems to have gone into a political hibernation.
Mulayam and Shivpal both began giving party events a miss — Mulayam as the chief patron of the party and Shivpal as its MLA. Incidentally, till date, Mulayam has not indicated if he has accepted or rejected the SP's chief patron's position that Akhilesh had declared for him.
Akhilesh chose Ram Govind Chaudhary over Shivpal for naming party's nominee for the leader of the opposition post. It was Shivpal who held the position during Mayawati's previous regime.
Though both Mulayam and Akhilesh were together on the stage when Yogi Adiyanath took oath as UP’s chief minister on March 19, that couldn’t be taken as a sign for any rapprochement between the rival factions in SP because both Mulayam and Akhilesh are known for making such courtesy gestures to rival parties. Underthecircumstance,the two quick successive meetings with Yogi Adityanath is being construed as pin-pricks to Akhilesh camp. Aparna who had always been considered ShivpalMulayam camp 'member', along with her husband and Mulayam’s second son Prateek Yadav first met Yogi at his makeshift Luc- know residence at VVIP guest house, and then on Friday, the couple participated in 'cow shelter' visit with Yogi.
Another sign of continued warring between the factions came when Samajwadi Party declared its list of 76 campaigners for MCD polls. Mulayam and Shivpal were not listed in it.
Akhliesh has already engineered a change in the party’s constitution and one of the chief feature of the amendment is increase of term of the national president from three years to five years. And, now, in Mainpuri on Saturday, Mulayam went on to say "no father ever gives son the chief ministership, but I did. And the whole five years, Akhilesh disregarded me." Mulayam said that because of Akhilesh, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the one who cannot be of his father, can't be of anyone else.
It was in Mainpuri, that Yadav family feud came out in the open when on August 14 last year, Shivpal Yadav had threatened to quit alleging a conspiracy against him. After that, the family feud kept on snowballing till
Akhilesh Yadav on January 1 took the reins of the party in his hands. Akhilesh could not give Mulayam the promised victory and that set the tone for Yadav family feud’s next edition.