THE RIFT IN THE YADAV CITADEL
All is not well in the family of Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch and former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav. This year, the Holi festival on March 29 made public the fissures in the family. For the first time, an unwell Mulayam Singh Yadav did not reach his native village Saifai in Etawah district to celebrate Holi. Mulayam’s son and SP national president Akhilesh Yadav was playing Holi with his supporters at his father’s haveli in Saifai. Meanwhile, Shivpal Singh Yadav, the patriarch’s younger brother, was celebrating with his supporters at the local SS College a short distance away. The big news was that the Yadav first family was celebrating Holi separately in Saifai.
The tussle within the Saifai clan has intensified since Mulayam’s niece Sandhya Yadav declared herself a BJP candidate for the district panchayat member’s post from Mainpuri on April 7. Sandhya is the daughter of Mulayam’s youngest brother Abhay Ram Yadav and elder sister of Dharmendra Yadav, a former Samajwadi MP from Badaun. This is the first time that a member of the Mulayam family is fighting an election on a BJP ticket. Sandhya won the election for Mainpuri district panchayat president on an SP ticket in 2015. Her husband Anujesh Pratap Yadav’s mother Urmila Yadav is a former SP MLA from Ghiror in Mainpuri. Anujesh’s family has good ties with Shivpal Yadav. For this reason, in July 2017, the SP moved a noconfidence motion against Sandhya but the BJP state government came to her aid and the motion fell through. Says an SP source, on condition of anonymity, “Sandhya’s family got closer to the saffron camp after the incident.”
In March 2019, Sandhya’s husband Anujesh joined the BJP. After this, Dharmendra Yadav, her brother, declared in a letter that he was snapping all ties with Anujesh’s family. Sandhya, however, maintained her ties with Saifai, going there often to take care of her unwell father. Dharmendra declined to comment on Sandhya’s latest move, saying only that his letter of two years ago said it all. Rajendra Chaudhary, the leader closest to Akhilesh and the chief spokesperson of the SP, says, “The BJP is scared of the SP. But if they believe that by splitting the Mulayam family, they can weaken the socialist movement, they are mistaken. We were sure that the BJP would pull a stunt like this before the 2022 assembly election. We are not worried, this will only make the SP stronger.”
AKHILESH AND SHIVPAL WERE THERE IN SAIFAI, BUT FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE YADAV FIRST FAMILY PLAYED HOLI SEPARATELY
Mulayam’s family has been influential in the Lok Sabha seats of Etawah, Mainpuri, Firozabad and Kannauj for a long time. There are a total of 20 assembly seats in these four Lok Sabha constituencies. In the 2012 assembly election, the SP had won an unprecedented 17 of them. Senior advocate in Mainpuri Ajay Singh says, “The Mulayam Yadav family had split into the camps of Akhilesh and Shivpal before the 2017 assembly election and they had to bear the brunt of this. The SP, which formed the government by winning 224 seats in 2012, could manage just 47 in the 2017 election.” Worse, on their home turf, the SP could win only six of the 20 seats, with the BJP taking the other 14. Even so, Mainpuri stayed true to the SP—the party won four of the five assembly seats there.
After the 2017 assembly election, the BJP got busy trying to get a foothold in Mainpuri and the surrounding areas. The party appointed senior leader Harnath Singh Yadav from the adjoining Etah district to get the job done. Harnath became an MP in the Rajya Sabha election in March 2018, and soon after the BJP started a campaign to connect with SP workers in Yadav-dominated areas. It seemed to have had an impact in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Mulayam, who had won the Lok Sabha election from Mainpuri by over 400,000 votes in 2014, saw his majority shrinking to an all-time low of 93,000 votes in 2019. The SP also lost the Kannauj and Firozabad Lok Sabha seats. Former principal of Etawah Government Degree College, R.P. Singh, says, “The SP’s defeat in Kannauj and Firozabad was a result of the ongoing feud between Akhilesh and his uncle Shivpal; the BJP took full advantage of it.”
After the Lok Sabha election, the BJP started focusing on Mainpuri even more. In August 2019, Ram Naresh Agnihotri, the BJP legislator from Bhogaon assembly seat in Mainpuri, was given a cabinet minister’s post with charge of the excise department in the Yogi Adityanath government. In October 2020, Geeta Shakya, a firebrand BJP leader in Mainpuri, got nominated to the Rajya Sabha. She has been very active in the Shakya communitydominated areas of Mainpuri. The BJP now has also got Ashu Diwakar, prominent local leader and a former district panchayat president of Mainpuri, on their side.
Ashutosh Saxena, an associate professor in the political science department of Christ Church College in Kanpur, says, “Mulayam’s family is currently divided into three political camps—the Mulayam camp, the Akhilesh camp and the Shivpal camp. With Mulayam almost out of the game due to ill health, and the Akhilesh and Shivpal camp at loggerheads, the Yadav voters are confused on whom to support. The BJP could take political advantage of this.” The 2022 assembly election will be a real test of the electoral standing of the Samajwadi Party and of rival claimants in the family to the party’s legacy.