LUCKNOW: While the chasm in Yadav family seems to have widened further, the chinks in the armour of the alliance, led by the Samajwadi Party, surfaced on Tuesday.
On one hand, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s uncle and Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia chief Shivpal Yadav boycotted the meeting of allies called by Akhilesh in Lucknow, on the other, an important ally Mahan Dal was not invited to the meeting which was convened to ascertain the reasons of alliance’s defeat in recently concluded UP elections.
Even Apna Dal (K) leader Pallavi Patel, who had contested the assembly election on SP symbol from Sirathu defeating BJP’s Keshav Maurya, did not make it to the meeting.
However, the reason for her absence is said to be her unhappiness over the alleged SP’s treatment with allies.
As per the invite shared by the SP on twitter, leaders of four parties—Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party’s (SBSP) OP Rajbhar, PSP-L chief Shivpal Yadav, Apna Dal (K)’s Pallavi Patel and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) Legislative Party leader Rajpal Baliyan were invited to the review meeting. SP alliance has won 125 seats in the recently concluded UP polls.
While SP bagged 111 seats, smaller allies including RLD got eight seats and SBSP six seats. While Apna Dal (K) could not win any seat on its ticket, none of the Mahan Dal candidate could make it to the Assembly.
When Akhilesh Yadav was chairing the meeting with allies at SP headquarters in Lucknow, his uncle Shivpal Yadav was in Etawah busy attending a religious function.
Shivpal reached Etawah back on Tuesday after meeting elder brother and SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav in Delhi.
Sulking Shivpal, taking the vow to open his mouth at an appropriate time, had proceeded to Etawah after he was not invited to SP legislative party meeting in which Akhilesh was elected SPLP leader on Saturday.
He had openly expressed his discontent over not being invited to SPLP meeting.
However, after Shivpal’s outburst, SP had rushed to issue the clarification saying that none of the allies were called to the meeting and Shivpal too fell in the category of allies. Whereas Shivpal contended that he was an SP MLA who contested and won the Jaswantnagar seat on SP symbol so he should have been invited to the SP legislative party meeting.
In fact, Shivpal has been sulking since his party was not spared even a single seat to contest in the recently concluded elections.
Even Shivpal was made to contest on SP symbol from his traditional Jaswantnagar seat which he won by over 90,000 votes.
During the elections, Shivpal failed to hide his discontent when he had claimed that he agreed to contest on SP symbols sacrificing his own party following Mulayam Singh Yadav’s instructions.
It may be recalled that Akhilesh had reached out to Shivpal ahead of Assembly elections offering him to contest the polls on SP symbol from Jaswantnagar.