‘Son betrayed but not floating a new party’
Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday termed his son Akhilesh Yadav a betrayer but said he would not form a new party.
Addressing a press conference at the Lohia Trust office near SP headquarters here, Mulayam said: “A son has betrayed his father. He had said that three months after the elections he will return the party presidentship to me but he didn’t. He did not keep his words.”
“A man who can’t keep his words, can’t succeed,” he said and added that “all of Akhilesh’s decisions were wrong” without specifying the decisions. Mulayam, however, made it clear that he was “not forming any new party as of now”.
When asked if there was any scope of reconciliation between the two, he replied, “Of course, the father’s blessings are with his son. How long can differences last between a father and a son?”
While Mulayam’s press conference was on, Akhilesh tweeted: “Netaji zindabad, Samajwadi Party zindabad”.
Neither SP MLA Shivpal Yadav nor Sunil Singh, the president of Lok Dal who offered Mulayam to take over the party, attended the press conference.
Mulayam said he would not attend the national convention of the party scheduled in Agra on October 5. “Akhilesh said he will never leave the party but he left the party. SP is mine; he had left the party,” he announced.
Mulayam said in view of the current political scenario in the country, all socialists should unite and strengthen the Samajwadi Party.
Attacking the Centre and state government, Mulayam said demonetisation and GST had crippled the country’s economy and the farmers were cheated in the name of farm loan waiver.