LUCKNOW: After giving a tough fight to the ruling BJP in the recently concluded assembly polls, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is set to don the new role as the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly.
Akhilesh was unanimously elected as leader of the SP legislative party by newly elected MLAs of his party in Lucknow on Saturday.
After making his assembly election debut from Karhal, Akhilesh quit his Lok Sabha seat from Azamgarh on Monday.
"The Samajwadi Party's newly elected MLAs unanimously chose the party's national president, Akhilesh Yadav as the leader of the legislators' group," said Naresh Uttam Patel, SP state chief, while talking to media persons after the meeting.
In the recently concluded assembly elections, while the BJP combine retained the state for a second term by winning 273 seats, the Samajwadi Party along with its allies won 125 seats in the state assembly.
However, in the SP first family, all doesn’t seem well. The pre-poll bonhomie which was palpable after Akhilesh and his uncle Shivpal Yadav, chief of Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia (PSP-L), came together to fight the might of the BJP, seems to be dissipating again.
The rift came out in open on Saturday within the SP after Shivpal Yadav expressed his disappointment over not being called for the SP legislative party meeting. "I waited for two days and cancelled all my programs for this meeting but I wasn't invited. I am an MLA from Samajwadi Party but still, I was not called," Shivpal Yadav, who contested from the Jaswantnagar seat on the symbol of Samajwadi Party, said. The uncle-nephew duo had reached an agreement just before the UP polls after years of differences.
It may be recalled that ahead of the 2017 assembly elections, the two leaders had an intense feud of one-upmanship and control over the party. Beginning August 2016, the battle of nerves peaked with Akhilesh taking over as party chief deposing his father and former UP CM Mulayam Singh Yadav. More dissension resulted in the party and it impacted its performance in the 2017 assembly elections when it was routed from every region of the state.
In the aftermath, Shivpal, who was stripped of the post of party’s state chief by Akhilesh, floated his own outfit PSP-L before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He contested against SP candidate and then sitting MP Akshay Yadav from Firozabad denting his prospects badly and the BJP walked away with the seat. Shivpal has had limited electoral success but continues to wield influence in districts like Etawah, Mainpuri, Firozabad, Agra and Mathura.
Last year, the chill between the uncle and nephew seemed to have eased out as SP and PSP-L together fought the panchayat poll in Etawah winning 18 out of 24 wards.
By December 2021, the two parties had reached a seat-sharing agreement for the assembly polls. That is how Shivpal came to be a candidate for the SP-PSP alliance. Shivpal defeated BJP's Vivek Shakya by 90,979 votes in the assembly elections.