SP crisis: UP CM loses aide, meets ‘rebels’

The divide in Uttar Pradesh’s ruling family worsened with Samajwadi Party national chief Mulayam Singh Yadav deciding to speak to ministers, MPs and legislators on Monday, a day after his chief minister son Akhilesh Yadav is set to hold a similar meeting.

On Saturday, the party expelled MLC Udaiveer Singh who wanted the SP supremo to step down and make way for the CM to lead the party nationally. The CM met youth leaders expelled for supporting him and speaking against his father. Senior party leaders met the father-son duo separately.

The party first looked divided between the CM and his uncle Shivpal Yadav. Mulayam Singh Yadav has since backed Shivpal Yadav over his CM son.

The CM did not attend the state executive meeting of the party on Saturday. In fact, he has not visited the party office since September 13 when Shivpal Yadav replaced him as the SP’s UP chief,

Shivpal Yadav convened on Friday a meeting of SP district and city unit presidents, which was given a miss by the CM. The BJP said on Saturday that the much-publicised rift in the Yadav family was being fuelled by the Samajwadi Party itself to cover the failures of CM Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh.

“This high-voltage drama has been strategically designed so that Akhilesh Yadav’s failures are given a cover. In UP everything from law and order to farming is in shambles,” BJP leader Srikant Sharma told ANI.

A damaging power struggle in the Yadav clan came out in the open last month when Akhilesh Yadav stripped Shivpal Yadav of key portfolios hours after Mulayam Singh Yadav replaced the CM with his brother as the SP’s UP chief.

The CM has “unilaterally” decided to kickstart the Samajwadi Party’s poll campaign next month, a move that may also make him skip the party’s silver jubilee celebrations in Lucknow.

Though the patriarch managed to broker a truce between the two power centers, pulling the party from the brink of a potential split, tensions remain, which threaten to derail the Yadav clan’s bid to retain power in the elections due early next year.