We’re real Samajwadi Party, 90% MLAs back us: Ram Gopal

A day after Mulayam approached Election Commission, Akhilesh camp meets CEC, stakes claim to official party symbol 'cycle'.

SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav, Akshay Yadav, Naresh Aggarwal and others come out after meeting the chief election commissioner in New Delhi on Tuesday | (Shekhar Yadav | EPS)

NEW DELHI: With Ram Gopal Yadav, who represents the Akhilesh Yadav camp in the SP, also approaching the Election Commission staking a claim to the party’s cycle symbol, the ball is now in the poll watchdog’s court.

“We have told the Election Commission that 90 percent of MLAs are supporting Akhilesh Yadav ji and hence the party led by him must be considered as the SP,” he said after pleading the case of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister before the commission on Tuesday.

Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav’s supporters, however, insisted that last Saturday’s expulsion of Akhilesh and Ram Gopal was never revoked on paper, and was conditional upon Akhilesh not holding a convention.

Because of these two reasons, Akhilesh and Ram Gopal are technically still disqualified. They also argued that because of this Mulayam is the real “owner” of the party and symbol should go to him.

Since the Assembly elections to Uttar Pradesh are set to be announced any day now, the commission has little time to adjudicate the matter.

As an interim measure, it is now likely to freeze the cycle symbol and ask the two factions to contest on a new symbol. It may also give the two sides a new name to contest the polls till the time a final decision is taken on the real “ownership” of the SP and its symbol ‘cycle’.

Ram Gopal, a cousin of Mulayam, has been standing firm behind Akhilesh. He has been considered as one of key decision makers of the party.

On Sunday Akhilesh appointed himself the party president removing his father Mulayam from the post at an emergency national convention. He replaced state unit chief Shivpal Singh Yadav and expelled Amar Singh, who had to cut short his London tour to reach Delhi.

However, the convention was declared illegal and unconstitutional by Mulayam. After the special national convention, Ram Gopal dispatched a letter to the poll panel informing it about the election of Akhilesh as the new Samajwadi Party president.

Meanwhile, Senior SP leader Azam Khan said the possibility of a patch-up between the two factions remains, asserting that anything was possible.

Khan, who had prevailed on Mulayam to revoke the expulsion of Akhilesh and Ram Gopal Yadav before they “removed” him from the party president’s post, said he would do what he could to bring about rapprochement.

“Anything is possible. Who would have thought that their expulsion would be revoked,” he told reporters.

A bitter critic of Mulayam’s close aide Amar Singh, Khan is seen as the party’s Muslims face and has maintained a neutral profile in public during the ongoing feud.

Asked if the infighting would adversely impact Muslim voters, a durable support base of the party, he said they would never want the SP government to go and would, therefore, work to prevent the BJP from coming to power.