At a time when he was under tremendous pressure from his younger brother Shivpal Yadav and other members of the family and supporters to announce formation of a new party, Mulayam Singh Yadav appealed to a cross section of society to strengthen the Samajwadi Party at this crucial juncture. He also stressed the need for all those who believed in socialist ideology to come on one platform to help the party.

Mulayam Singh at the eleventh hour refused to read a paper given to him by Shivpal and others. On the contrary, he read a press note which was critical of the Modi government as well as the Yogi government. But he was critical of his son for not keeping his word to return the post of national president to his father after three months but kept talking about strengthening his party which he founded with others leaders in 1992.

Akhilesh Yadav had convened a national convention of party in January and got himself installed as the national president. Since then Shivpal Yadav, who is almost out of the party like his elder brother, is demanding that Akhilesh return the post. Akhilesh has again convened a national convention at Agra on October 5, where he is expected to be installed as president for five years.

The growing acceptability of Akhilesh Yadav among senior leaders is evident from the fact that veteran leaders like Beni Prasad Verma and Mohd Azam Khan, who were maintaining a distance from the young Yadav leader, were seen attending the state convention. They even launched an attack on Shivpal Yadav for helping BJP in the last assembly polls when the saffron party scored an impressive victory.

Now the only option before Shivpal Yadav is to form a new party after the Agra convention and support BJP or join the saffron brigade with his supporters. The BJP would of course like Shivpal Yadav to mobilise his supporters and form the party to weaken Akhilesh and his party before the 2019 Polls. Shivpal will have support from the immediate family members of Mulayam and his younger daughter in law, who lost the assembly election to Rita Bahuguna in Lucknow.

Shivpal Yadav is very upset with the behaviour of brother Mulayam Singh, whom he treated like Lord Ram and obeyed him all through his political career and enjoyed the number two position in the party and the government. He now feels that enough is enough; that is why his close associate Sharda Prasad Shukla launched an attack on Mulayam Singh Yadav and accused him of betraying the Samajwadi ideology.

Shivpal and his supporters are expected to announce their next step after the Agra convention convened by Akhilesh. (IPA Service).