Akhilesh Yadav announces ‘alliance’ with party of uncle Shivpal

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav today called on his estranged uncle Shivpal Yadav at the house of the latter and announced alliance with the latter’s Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia). After the meeting, Akhilesh, these days busy striking alliances with smaller parties, tweeted that the two leaders discussed the modalities of an “alliance”.

“Met national president of PSPL and finalised alliance. The SP’s policy to take along regional parties is strengthening the party and take SP and its allies towards victory,” Akhilesh said in a tweet in Hindi after the meeting.

The meeting preceded the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections which are scheduled to take place in early 2022.

Akhilesh reached Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) founder’s residence in the afternoon and had closed door talks with him for about 40 min. Hundreds of supporters of their parties gathered outside Shivpal’s house raising slogan “Chacha-Bhatija zindabad”.

SP founder Mulayam SIngh Yadav was present at Shivpal’s residence before Akhilesh reached there, SP sources said.

The relationship between the uncle (66) and the nephew had gone sour in 2016 with the sacking of Shivpal by Akhilesh when he was chief minister. Akhilesh became the SP president in January 2017 and Shivpal formed his own party.

Reacting to the meet, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said the meeting would not impact BJP’s prospects in the polls. “Thd BJP is going to form majority government again in 2022 by winning over 300 seats. Whether there was a meeting of ‘Chacha’ ‘Bhatija’ or ‘Bua’ ‘Bhatija’ or SP or Indian National Congress (INC) or all of them, only lotus (BJP’s election symbol) will bloom,” he said.

Akhilesh Yadav had recently said about Maurya that the latter should work as a sweeper, apparently agitated by the fact that the deputy chief minister had raised the issue of freeing Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura from the imposing monstrosity of a mosque built over the area where the Hindu god is believed to have been born, while Krishna is also believed to be greatest hero of Yadavas, the core constituency of the Samajwadi Party, which Akhilesh thought might get eroded by the BJP’s Hindutva call.

In the 2017 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party bagged 312 seats out of the 403-seat Uttar Pradesh Assembly while Samajwadi Party (SP) bagged 47 seats, Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) won 19 and INC could manage to win only seven seats. The rest of the seats were bagged by other candidates.