Akhilesh to take over SP; illegal, says Mulayam as loyalists switch sides

With the succession battle settled in his favour on Saturday, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday showed he wasn’t just a soft-spoken second-generation dynast but has inherited the toughness of his father Mulayam Singh Yadav which is required to survive in the hurly burly of cow-belt politics.

The succession in the Samajwadi Party was completed in all respects when Akhilesh and his supporters, which included nearly all of the party legislators and senior leaders, passed a resolution at an emergency meeting open to media to dismiss Mulayam as party chief and appointed him a ‘margdarshak’, or mentor. The resolution appointed Akhilesh as the new national party chief. 

Mulayam termed the meeting illegal and its decisions null and void. The SP patriarch has convened the party’s national convention on Thursday.

In his speech at the meeting, Akhilesh alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had engineered the infighting within the Samajwadi Party (SP). Another resolution dismissed party Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh from the party for sowing discord, while a third resolution sacked Shivpal Yadav as state party chief.

Akhilesh said Mulayam was being misled by forces outside the party and the changes were necessary for survival of the party. He didn’t take any names, not even of his stepmother and her family which the Akhilesh camp accuses of having colluded with enemies of the party. 

Akhilesh appealed to SP cadres to defeat “communal forces”, a reference to BJP, in the forthcoming elections and said he respected his father and would gift him a victory in UP. Later in the day, he appointed Naresh Uttam Patel, a backward caste leader, as UP unit chief.

The coup was complete with some muscle flexing when Akhilesh supporters barged into the party office at Vikramaditya Marg, threw out those who support state unit chief Shivpal Yadav and wrenched off his nameplate. Shivpal was seen jostling with the police to enter the office.

The fresh twists and turns in the SP feud, which could continue in the days to come, are likely to worry Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah who are scheduled to speak at a much-awaited public rally in Lucknow on Monday.

It is going to be Modi’s first public rally after he announced sops on New Year’s eve to ease the pain of 50-days of note ban.

Mulayam retaliated by announcing the dismissal of Ram Gopal Yadav from the SP for six years.

A similar order on him was issued on Friday, with Akhilesh similarly expelled; Mulayam rescinded this on Saturday, party leader and cabinet minister Mohd Azam Khan played peacemaker.

Nearly the entire party, including Mulayam loyalists, have switched sides to Akhilesh, after realising key leaders and the youth cadres were staunchly supporting him. The fragile peace in the faction-ridden SP was recently broken when Mulayam started to announce candidates for the assembly polls and Akhilesh retorted by releasing his own list.

The two sides are now preparing for another round of battle before the Election Commission and possibly the courts for the right to use the SP’s electoral symbol, the bicycle.