NEW DELHI, March 26: The Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav, who opted to stay in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly quitting his Lok Sabha seat, is set to become the leader of the opposition in the state Assembly holding the rank of a cabinet minister.
Yadav was on Saturday elected as the leader of the SP legislative party at a meeting of newly elected MLAs in Lucknow, which also brought back to focus the on-going fissures in the first family of the party. On Tuesday, Akhilesh had decided to retain Karhal Assembly seat, giving up his Lok Sabha membership from the Azamgarh constituency instead.
Speaking at a press conference after the meeting of SP legislature party, state party president Naresh Uttam Patel said, “Akhilesh Yadav has been elected as the leader of the SP Legislative Party. His name was proposed by senior SP MLA Awadhesh Prasad and it was supported by all elected MLAs.”
“The MLAs have given their blessings to Akhileshji to raise the issues faced by the people in the Assembly. He will oppose the wrong policies of the government as per democratic principles. In the past, the BJP has cheated the people of the state and hence, the BJP has been given fewer seats as compared to last time. The people have shown confidence in Akhilesh Yadavji and even voted to make him the chief minister. But because of the misuse of power by the BJP… many voters were left out. Names of SP supporters were removed from the voters list in all Vidhan Sabha constituencies,” said Patel.
In the recently held Assembly elections, Akhilesh won the Karhal seat in Mainpuri by 60,000-odd votes, beating BJP MP SP Singh Baghel. It was his first Vidhan Sabha election. In 2019, he won as an MP from Azamgarh; his fourth parliamentary win. In 2012, when he became the chief minister, he had chosen the MLC route to the Assembly.
The prospect of Akhilesh as the leader of the opposition means the BJP can’t expect to have an easy run either. Unlike the last term, when the SP had 47 MLAs, this time it has 125 in the 403-member House, including six MLAs of ally Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party and eight of the Rashtriya Lok Dal. With the Congress being left with just two seats, and the BSP with one, the SP is the only sizeable Opposition party in the state with numbers in the Assembly.
But the SP legislature party meeting had its own fissures with the continuous strains in the first family of the party again coming to the fore. Akhilesh’s uncle and the senior party leader Shivpal Singh Yadav complained that he was not invited for meeting in which Akhilesh Yadav was unanimously elected the leader. “I have no information about the meeting. I tried to contact the SP leaders but I have not got any information about it,” Shivpal told the media here. “Under these circumstances my going to the legislature party meeting will not be correct,” he said. The SP MLA from Jaswant Nagar seat said he will work according to the will of the party, but at the same time wondered why he was not invited to the meet while all the other MLAs were.
The younger brother of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav said he fought on the party’s bicycle symbol and even campaigned for Akhilesh in Karhal and SP candidates in many other places. “Despite this, I don’t know why I was not informed about the legislature party meeting,” he said.
“I will talk to my supporters both in the SP as well as my own party. I have to say nothing about the future as of now.” After remaining at loggerheads since 2017, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and uncle Shivpal had decided to mend fences just before the recently concluded state assembly election.
Their estrangement had resulted in Shivpal’s launching his own party, PSP-L (Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia), before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In the 2022 assembly polls, the two had put up a united front at behest of Mulayam Singh Yadav.
(Manas Dasgupta)