The Samajwadi Party (SP) has suspended all its youth organisations, student wings, women organisations and all other cells with immediate effect. A note issued from the party headquarters said that the national presidents, state presidents of the various wings of the party and the national and state executives of these were also being disbanded.
In addition, all the district and city bodies, committees, office bearers at the Vidhan Sabha level have also been removed. This means, in effect the party has no office bearer at the state level, save its state president Naresh Uttam Patel.
Party spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said that these steps were part of a re-organisation process. “It is the party president’s prerogative”, he said.
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Reeling under an extremely poor performance in the Lok Sabha elections in which the party, which had formed an alliance with the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP), won just five seats, many in the party see it as a welcome and necessary step.
On the day that the Lok Sabha elections were declared, the party had dismissed all its spokespersons, and they are yet to be re-appointed. The party has also been unusually quiet in the state in the aftermath of the elections. The only visible and vocal show it has mounted was the protest against the killing of 10 people in Sonbhadra over a land dispute. An erosion in the party’s national standing has been borne out by the resignation of three Rajya Sabha Mps, including Neeraj Shekhar, son of former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar. Neeraj was later elected to the upper house from the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP).
The SP has four frontal organisations- the Chattra Sabha, Mulayam Singh Youth Brigade, Yuvjan Sabha and Lohia Vahini- all of which stand disbanded now.
A party leader told THE WEEK, “At the district level, many of these were either not functional or had not been fully formed since 2012. Their dissolution and reconstitution is necessary for party re-organisation which has been delayed for many years now”.
Today’s step is seen as the first sign of Akhilesh Yadav attempting to come to grip with the slide in the party. It is the first of many tough steps he is likely to take to stem the party’s downward spiral which saw even his wife Dimple lose the polls from Kannauj.
A former party spokesperson told THE WEEK, “There was a stage where we had more than 50 spokespersons. Anybody who asked for the post would get it. It did not matter if they had the competency to put forth the party’s view. This will hopefully change now”.
