Samajwadi Party rift: What does Mulayam Singh Yadav want?
The trouble brewing in Samajwadi Party doesn’t seem to be close to any resolution. Despite multiple attempts at a truce, it is, in fact, getting more complicated by the day.
A lot of things playing out today might have their roots in SP's drubbing in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, which was eventually labelled as UP CM Akhilesh Yadav’s failure. It was speculated in the aftermath that Akhilesh was going to be relieved of his charge as state president since he was finding it tough to handle both jobs simultaneously. No such thing, however, happened.
A lot of analysis of the current crisis does not take into account the role of patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav. What does Mulayam really want? Is he trying to take the reins of the Uttar Pradesh government and lead the party into the polls? Or is it merely a fight between "chacha" and "bhatija" as most people make it out to be?
A closer look at the developments dating back to roughly a year suggests otherwise. It was around the same time last year that Shivpal Yadav was given the charge of SP's campaign in the Uttar Pradesh local body polls. The party fared well and Shivpal’s organisational skills were on display. Shivpal was also the party’s pointsman in the Mahagadbandhan episode till Mulayam had a sudden change of mind.
Early in 2016, Amar Singh was seen meeting and hobnobbing with Mulayam, which gave rise to speculations that he was once again back in favour and on his way back to the party. Amar Singh had been expelled from the party since February 2010, and had unsuccessfully put up candidates in 350 of the 400 odd seats in the 2012 Assembly polls, and later contested as a Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) candidate in the 2014 general elections.
A crucial development missed by everyone in the build up to the current crisis is Shivpal Singh’s appointment on April 11, 2016 as the party in-charge of the Uttar Pradesh unit, a post not specified in the Samajwadi Party constitution. It was played down as a charge that was necessitated on account of the polls less than a year away. It can be seen that all the problems in the Yadav/Samajwadi parivar began then.
A month later, Amar Singh was nominated as a Rajya Sabha MP of the party, which once again set tongues wagging as senior leaders including Akhilesh Yadav, Ram Gopal Yadav and Azam Khan were not in favour of the move. This was also the time when Mulayam Singh Yadav made news for making off-the-cuff statements about taking over the reins in Uttar Pradesh.
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| Things could not have gone this far if Mulayam Singh Yadav wasn’t solidly throwing his weight behind Shivpal. (Photo: PTI) |
It seems Mulayam was led to believe that fate of the 2014 general elections would befall the party in 2017, if it solely went with the development agenda and the youth appeal of son Akhilesh.
Soon after, a merger between the Mukhtar Ansari-led Quami Ekta Dal into the SP was attempted without Akhilesh’s knowledge and that resulted in cabinet minister Balram Yadav’s sacking on June 2 by the CM. This was the first indication of Akhilesh putting his foot down and standing firm. Despite Shivpal’s public statements and Mulayam’s blessings in private, the merger had to be officially called off on June 25.
This was followed by a month of friction between Akhilesh and uncle Shivpal which eventually resulted in Shivpal’s threat to resign on August 14. He also levelled allegations of corruption against certain elements in the establishment.
Mulayam Singh promptly stepped in and diffused the crisis the next day, though his strong statement that "SP will split if Shivpal were to resign" didn’t go unnoticed. This was the first indication that Mulayam Singh was taking sides in this power struggle for the control of the party.
The current crisis was triggered on September 11 at a party thrown by Amar Singh to celebrate the election of Subhash Chandra to the Rajya Sabha, attended among others by Mulayam and Shivpal Yadav, with Akhilesh giving it a miss. It emerged that Vijay Singhal, the UP chief secretary appointed just a couple of months back and a close confidante of Shivpal, had bad-mouthed Akhilesh in the company of some politicians.
On September 12, Akhilesh sacked two ministers, including mining minister Gayatri Prajapati and panchayti raj minister Rajkishore Singh, who were facing allegations of corruption. The very next day, he sacked Vijay Singhal.
This was followed by Mulayam Singh replacing Akhilesh with Shivpal as the state party chief. Within hours, Akhilesh retaliated by divesting uncle Shivpal of most portfolios, including PWD, leaving him with only social welfare ministry.
A patch-up was attempted, and on September 16 the CM reinstated Gayatri Prajapati who is known to be closen to Mulayam, and handed back all the portfolios he had divested off his uncle. But it was also announced that Shivpal will continue as the state president. On September 20, it was evident that the fissures had only widened when Shivpal sacked many office bearers of the party close to Akhilesh.
After a month of relative calm, though many things went on in the background, all hell broke loose after the developments on October 22. MLC Udayveer Singh was expelled from the party for writing to Mulayam, asking him to make way for Akhilesh. This was followed by a letter written by the Samajwadi Party general secretary and Mulayam’s cousin, Ram Gopal Yadav, to the party leaders to throw their weight behind Akhilesh.
The next day, Akhilesh sacked four ministers, including uncle Shivpal from the Cabinet. This was followed by a hurried press conference where Shivpal announced the expulsion of Ram Gopal Yadav, virtually the number two in the party hierarchy till months ago, for six years. The same day, Akhilesh convened a meeting of his legislators where almost 200 of the 230 SP MLAs were present.
What happened a day later in the meeting of SP legislators, district and block presidents called by Mulayam and in the presence of the entire top leadership and the TV cameras was unprecedented.
The bottom line is that things could not have gone this far if Mulayam Singh Yadav wasn’t solidly throwing his weight behind Shivpal. But it also seems that Akhilesh is in no mood to step down to end the crisis as he tries to emerge out of his father’s shadow.
Though he realises that the post of chief minister came to him on account of his lineage, he reckons that he has done enough to deserve to go to the people seeking votes on the basis of his work.
A senior Lucknow journalist, who has tracked Mulayam since the '80s thinks that all the analysts have got their story slightly wrong as they have consistently underestimated the foxiness of Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Make no mistake, Mulayam still has parliamentary ambitions and since his long-cherished ambition of being the prime minister seems a far-fetched possibility, he is looking at a final term as the Uttar Pradesh chief minister.
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