The four-month-old feud in Mulayam Singh's family has reached a peak with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav openly revolting against his father.
Akhilesh, hurt by the repeated humiliations and insults he has been facing, has come out with a list of 235 candidates for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh elections. The list is different from the official list issued by his father who is the national president of the party.
Apart from 171 sitting MLAs, the chief minister's list features candidates for 64 other seats which the party had lost in the last assembly elections. Besides, his aides—who found no place in the SP chief's list—too have been included in the CM's list while tainted politicians, including criminal-turned-politician Atique Ahmed and murder accused Amarmani Tripathi haven't made it to the list.
Interestingly, Mulayam’s younger daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav too hasn't been included in the list announced by the CM.
In retaliation, state party head and Mulayam’s younger brother Shivpal Yadav declared the names of 68 candidates.
With this high voltage political drama, factional war in the Yadav family has formally come out in the open.
Before taking this extreme step, the chief minister had met his father and strongly recommended the case of his loyalists and had asked Mulayam to give them tickets. Later, he met his close aides and asked them to be ready for polls, indicating that an extreme step was likely. The revolt happened hours after this meet.
Earlier, when Akhilesh had met SP MLAs at his residence, majority of them said the polls should be contested in his (Akhilesh) name.
MLA from Mainpuri constituency Rajkumar Yadav said, “There should be no misunderstanding; you have worked a lot in the past five years. So polls should be contested in your name.”
Another SP leader Atul Pradhan said, “You have exercised enough restraint. Now the time has come to go to the people and seek their mandate.”
However, 75 per cent candidates are same in both the list.
It may be recalled that war between Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav for the control of the party has been under way for quite some time. While the youth brigade and some senior party leaders like Ramgopal Yadav has been backing the CM, Shivpal has been supported by his brother.
