Family rift mars SP

The merger and then break up with Qaumi Ekta Dal have led to unpalatable consequences for the Samajwadi Party.

Party (the merger that was later called off on the insistence of Akhilesh Yadav and Prof Ram Gopal Yadav), made a delayed entry into the birthday celebrations and chose a quiet seat for himself among the audience.

He preferred to sit in the back row until Amar Singh held his hand and brought him to the front row. The newspaper headlines, the following day, spoke of the evident rift in the family instead of the birthday celebrations. Hours later, when Akhilesh and his wife and children jetted off to London, SP MLAs trooped in to meet Shivpal at his residence and assured him of their support.

The merger with the Qaumi Ekta Dal (a party which also has mafia don turned politician Mukhtar Ansari), meanwhile, has left a series of unpalatable consequences for the Samajwadi Party. According to sources, Muslims in over a dozen districts in eastern UP are upset with the Samajwadi Party for insulting the Ansari brothers. “No one went begging to the Samajwadi Party for the merger. They wanted our votes for Rajya Sabha and Vidhan Parishad and then it was Mulayam Singh who insisted on the merger. What has happened later is downright humiliating,” said Afzal Ansari, president of QED.

Junaid Shakeel, a student from Mau district, echoed similar sentiments and said, “The Muslims in eastern UP will avenge this humiliation in the upcoming Assembly elections.” Interestingly, the QED fiasco which led to the sudden dismissal of UP minister Balram Yadav, who reportedly facilitated the merger, had left the Yadavs angry too. Visuals of the dismissed minister shedding tears on national TV have led to outrage in the community. “Akhilesh had no business to dismiss him. Lesser Yadavs cannot be treated like dirt,” said one of his supporters. Political speculation is rife in Maharashtra over the Devendra Fadnavis government’s plan to expand the Cabinet this week. The expansion is likely to take place before 10 July, when the Chief Minister embarks on a Russia tour. The names of both Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena leaders have been doing the rounds of political circles. The smaller allies, too, are likely to get a place in the Cabinet. The BJP leadership had indicated that a Cabinet expansion would happen before the monsoon session of the state legislature, which is slated to begin from 18 July. This leaves the Maharashtra government with the window of only one week before the CM goes abroad.

Although the last week saw immense bickering and infighting between BJP and Shiv Sena, Sena will get its share in the expansion.

On the occasion of Forest Day on Friday, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray sealed the fights with a kiss after they committed to stand by each other. “The tree of our friendship will only flourish,” both the leaders committed at a public function in Mumbai