CM unrelenting, father at his wit’s end

THE CRISIS IN SP IS NOT ALL ABOUT CHACHAS AND BHATIJA. IT’S ALSO A TUSSLE BETWEEN A FATHER AND A SON

LUCKNOW: For Akhilesh Yadav, the young, rebellious scion of UP’s Yadav clan, his father and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has drawn a red line: no undercutting his brother Shivpal Yadav and his brotherin-arms Amar Singh.

But the UP chief minister, an obedient son until recently, is in no mood to relent — not on his decision to sack Shivpal from his cabinet or on his demand to have a say in the selection of party candidates in the next assembly elections. He has been unsparing in his criticism of the two ‘chachas’. On Tuesday, when Mulayam declared unity in the family and the party at a press conference, the CM chose to watch it on TV from his residence.

Akhilesh has denied reports about breaking away from the SP. If Mulayam decides to act tough, it’s anybody’s guess how long it would take his supporters to disperse. But Akhilesh looks prepared for a fight to the finish. He is seeking to control the two parallel narratives that define the current crisis.

The first one is the intra-family tussle for Mulayam’s political legacy. Political ambitions of Akhilesh’s half-brother Prateek Yadav and his wife Aparna Yadav are no secret. They have been quietly watching Akhilesh’s rise since his emergence as the party’s face in the 2012 assembly polls. Prateek is the son of Mulayam’s second wife Sadhna Gupta. As Shivpal and Amar Singh take on Akhilesh, insinuations about the role of the CM’s step-mother’s family are part of many conspiracy theories.

The second narrative is what many believe an expected corollary to generational transition — from a brand of politics based on feudal, clannish loyalty to one driven by relatively identityneutral programmatic action.

“People who are uncomfortable with this change are those who are not able to digest this transition,” said legislator Sunil Yadav, the CM’s close aide who was expelled from the party after Shivpal took over as chief last month. The current crisis in the SP is not all about chachas and bhatija. It’s also about a tussle between a father who puts a premium on loyalties and a son who might not be averse to it but wants to brand it anew by imparting dosages of identity-neutral, aspirational politics to it.

“I think Amar is taking revenge for his insult,” Sunil Yadav said, in an apparent reference to Singh’s expulsion from the SP in 2010.

“Akhilesh has emerged as a gainer out of this. Even after mic-snatching (by Shivpal at Monday’s meeting) and humiliation (by Mulayam’s barbs), he has remained patient. People see him getting down from his car to buy groceries. These things have endeared him to them,” the CM’s biographer Frank Huzur said.

Some time ago, asked about how his son was doing, Mulayam told a Union minister: “Mehanati hai lekin rajniti mein chatur hona padta hai (he is hardworking but has to be cunning in politics).” Akhilesh might have proven him wrong. He refused to react to his father’s public jibes at him. He let his father’s confidant, principal secretary Anita Singh, run the chief minister’s office and lived with Cabinet colleagues — not exactly the paragons of virtues — for four-and-a-half years. Then he struck barely four months ahead of elections, a rebellion that many of his admirers believe would shift the focus away from law and order issues to his ‘crusade’ against the corrupt and the scheming.

For once, Mulayam seems to be at his wit’s end.