Lurking politics comes in forefront; Samajwadi Party fails to shadow it

Lucknow, Sept 14:  India often discusses about the Nerhruvian family and its dominance in the noted national party Indian National Congress. However, when we get to know the family politics of Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh (UP), it far more complicated but has the virtue of being non-nuclear unlike the trio combination Congress.

Ahead of UP elections, the family war in the Samajwadi Party is getting more intense as the Chief Minister Akshilesh Yadav stripped  the ministerial portfolios from his uncle  Shivpal Singh Yadav and the latter replaced the CM as state party president on the instructions of SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Akhilesh promptly took  away all the portfolios of Shivpal within hours after the uncle was named as the new state unit chief.

The state Chief Minister is seemed to be in a sacking spree as he also sacked mining minister Gayathri Prajapati and Panchayati Raj Minister Rajkishore Singh who were considered close to Mulayam Singh. The developments has shook Lucknow creating a conflicting atmosphere across the state.

On June 25, this year, the SP had witnessed an open fight among the family members involving SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav,  his son Akhilesh Yadav and brother Shivpal Singh.

Differences between Akhilesh and Shivpal have been reported on several occasions, including on the choice of official to be appointed as the state’s chief secretary after Alok Ranjan’s term ended, and stalling of Qaumi Ekta Dal’s (QED) merger with the SP. Shivpal was said to have shepherded the merger of gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s QED with the SP.

With Mulayam Singh being slowed by age, there has been an unnoticed struggle for power within the first family of the Samajwadi Party. But the party is finding hard to cope up as the UP assembly elections are on the top of their heads.

From day one, there have been tensioned strings among the old guards of the party and the young face of the party with latter having to concede ground to the former on more than one occasion at the instance of his father.

In the latest father-son slugfest, Mulayam Singh has weighed in on the side of his brother Shivpal Yadav, a senior minister who is apparently unhappy with the continuance of corrupt leaders and officers in the administration.

It is passing strange that Mulayam Singh has totally failed to deal with the crisis and seek a proper solution to stop  the internal politics within the party. In the past, he has refused to act against people like Azam Kham who have repeatedly brought disgrace to the party with their ugly comments and actions.

While there was a severe cold wave in UP last year, several UP ministers and MLAs went on a junket around Europe and Dubai. When questioned, Azam Khan sought to communalise the issue saying that people could not bear to see a Muslim representing India abroad.

This was all the more incredulous considering all the photographs of the trip showed the political worthies sailing around rivers in Europe on luxury boats and staggering out of shops weighed down by packages.

As long as the CM is in the saddle, it is counterproductive for him to be publicly upbraided by his own party chief and father. This can only create a further crisis of confidence in the SP and among the people.

Ahead of the 2017 elections, the young CM is also struggling to get out of the label of being father’s shadow by emerging as ‘Brand Akhilesh’. He introduced a bucket full of infrastructure projects building the brand image.

Four of the other projects are four-lane highways linking 44 district headquarters, the Lucknow metro being supervised by the redoubtable E. Sreedharan, a Rs 1,500 crore IT City in Chak Ganjaria on the outskirts of the state capital in which Shiv Nadar’s HCL is the primary partner, and a cancer hospital in Lucknow with top-of-the-line facilities. The sixth major project, an international cricket stadium, is also shown off enthusiastically by Akhilesh-with the same satisfied twinkle in his eyes-before the plane touches down back in Lucknow later that evening.