UP polls: ‘Mulayam ke log’ out to hurt SP

Lucknow: Samajwadi Party leaders who owe their allegiance to party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, and shunned by current party president and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, have started regrouping under the banner of “Mulayam ke log (Mulayam’s men)” in various districts across Uttar Pradesh.

Since the majority of party offices in districts have been taken over by the Akhilesh Yadav faction, Mulayam Singh loyalists have started opening separate offices under their new banner, and plan to conduct their political activities from here.

The parallel party office in Etawah was inaugurated by former party state chief Shivpal Yadav, who has been shunned by the Akhilesh faction, on Sunday in Chaugurji area and is being run by Sunil Yadav.

Raghuraj Singh Shakya, a three-term SP MLA who resigned two days ago after he was denied a ticket by Akhilesh Yadav, said, “We are followers of Mulayam Singh Yadav and cannot tolerate the humiliation that he has been made to suffer in recent weeks. This will be our meeting point and all those who believe in Netaji (Mulayam) will work together, following his ideology.” The leaders, however, will be “working overtime” to ensure the success of Shivpal Yadav from Jaswantnagar Assembly seat.

Amit Jani and Anil Varma, both SP leaders known to be Shivpal loyalists, have also set up a Shivpal Yadav Youth Brigade and Shivpal Yuvjan Sabha, ostensibly to counter the youth power of Akhilesh Yadav.

“We have already set up our district unit and will start working for those who have been wrongly denied tickets by the SP. We are not campaigning for Samajwadi Party but for our brothers who are contesting on tickets of different parties,” said Amit Jani. The emergence of this group across UP is bound to damage the official SP candidates.

“We will be campaign for Mulayam ke Log, irrespective of whether they are contesting from Lok Dal or as independents or any other party, and we will be using Mulayam Singh Yadav’s photographs in our campaign. Mulayam Singh Yadav will be coming to Etawah and will campaign for Shivpal Yadav,” said a member of the group. The mood in Mulayam ke Log is now even more upbeat after the Samajwadi patriarch rejected the Congress-SP alliance on Sunday and declared that he would not campaign for the SP.

“The day is not far when Netaji will distance himself completely form Akhilesh’s party,” said a loyalist.

The strategists in the Samajwadi Party are now worried about the parallel group playing spoiler. “If they use Mulayam Singh Yadav’s photograph, they will confuse our traditional voters and this could damage us to an extent,” admitted a party strategist.