Old Fox Mulayam's new move: Akhilesh will be next CM

LUCKNOW: In a major departure from his stubborn attitude in the ongoing party feud, SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav sprang a surprise while declaring that Akhilesh Yadav will be the next chief minister of Uttar Pradesh after party’s victory in the ensuing state assembly elections.

“Akhilesh will be the next chief minister and there is no doubt about it,” Mulayam, who was seen in a different mood, said told an agency here on late Monday night. Mulayam’s statement, being seen as an olive branch which he extended to the Akhilesh camp, is apparently a fresh bid by the SP patriarch to put an end to the party crisis owing to which, he believes, the party may suffer major reverses in the current elections.

However, political experts feel that it is also his desperate attempt to take his son out of the grip of his cousin Ram Gopal Yadav who has been Akhilesh’s chief adviser in the entire feud.

It is for the first time that Mulayam has announced that Akhilesh will the party’s chief minister candidate otherwise he has been advocating party’s tradition, on almost all the possible fora, of election of the legislature party leader by the elected MLAs only after the polls.

Talking all alone to the media conspicuously his loyalists Shivpal and Amar Singh’s absence, a relaxed looking Mulayam spoke his mind and denied any rift or bickering in the party or the family for that matter.

“Party mein koi toot-phoot nahi hai (There is no bickering in the party),” he asserted saying that it was united and fully prepared to go into the polls.

The SP leader also claimed that he would be embarking upon party’s campaign trail very soon by conducting public meeting in each division of the state.