Camaraderie between Yadav sister in laws under the family tutelage in politics
LUCKNOW, Feb9: Dimple Yadav rarely, if ever, makes public appearances alone. In Parliament, she is flanked by brothers-in-law Dharmendra and Tej Pratap, or by father-in-law Mulayam Singh Yadav. In Uttar Pradesh, she prefers to keep the company of her husband, chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. Even when she attends the maternal and child health care initiative she spearheads in UP, Dimple, 39, is usually accompanied by a senior SP woman functionary.
If the older of the two socialist bahus appears to be a reticent politician, it is because, some say, she can afford to sit back and let her husband take centre stage. “As far as political expectations from the Yadav family go, Dimple’s husband has achieved for both of them. So, though Akhilesh wants to see her grow in politics, she feels no pressure to shoulder the responsibility. She complements him perfectly,” an acquaintance of the family says.
Samajwadi ‘chhoti’ bahu, Aparna Yadav, 28, does not have this luxury. In a family where almost all Samajwadi sons and at least a few ‘bahus’ have taken to politics, and where the fault lines have lately surfaced, her husband Prateek—Mulayam’s younger son—is an exception. Prateek has chosen gym routines and business over politics, and Lamborghini luxury over staid Ambassador rides in UP politics. It is up to Aparna then, the SP debutante from the Lucknow Cantonment seat, to ‘man’ the constituency, walk through bylanes and to tell people during her personalised ‘nukkad sabhas’ and door-to-door campaigns that if she could deliver 250 roads and 500-odd submersible pumps in residential colonies when she wasn’t even running for legislator, she will only do better once elected.
A family friend said, “It is not as if Prateek is any less supportive of Aparna than Akhilesh is of Dimple. He accompanied her when she had to file her nominations for the assembly polls. But, he harbours no personal ambitions in politics and is happy to see her take the driving seat in this.”
Against Dimple’s quiet reticence then, Aparna is seen as eager and ambitious. Where Dimple sticks to written down scripts and is most comfortable pitching for the work husband Akhilesh has done as chief minister, Aparna is known to speak her mind, even at the expense of courting controversy; for praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, for distancing herself from Mulayam’s “boys will be boys…they make mistakes” remark, and also for striking a contrarian note by pitching for reservations on economic grounds rather than those based on caste.
