Lucknow: A little over 25 years after Mulayam Singh Yadav founded the Samajwadi Party, he lost control over it on Monday after the Election Commission (EC) recognised his son and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav as its president and allowed him to retain the ‘bicycle’ symbol.
The order, dealing a major blow to Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, came after the Election Commission heard the two sides on Friday.
It also came within a fortnight of Akhilesh being anointed the national president of the party.
“The commission hereby answers the issue by holding that the groups led by Akhilesh Yadav is the Samajwadi Party (SP) and is entitled to use its name and its reserved symbol ‘bicycle’ for the purposes of the election symbols (reservation and allotment) order 1968,” the EC order said.
Hundreds of party workers took to the streets with party flags and raised slogans hailing Akhilesh Yadav and Rajya Sabha member Ram Gopal Yadav, who mentored the faction in the power struggle within the ruling party.
“This is a great moment for us and we will go to the elections with full confidence now and win more seats than last time to form the next government,” said young party worker Anubhav Singh.
Happy at the verdict, Ram Gopal Yadav, the estranged cousin of party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, said he was thankful to the poll panel for its just and timely decision and added that he was with truth and not against any person.
“This was a ‘dharma yudh’ like the epic Mahabharata, in which relatives were split between right and wrong,” he said.
He also said the verdict was the first step towards his resolve to get Akhilesh Yadav back as the Chief Minister again.
“I had made this commitment to myself and hundreds of our supporters and I am happy that we are heading in that very direction,” he said.
Ram Gopal Yadav also said that while he had no “definitive information” on any alliance with the Congress and other like-minded parties, the Akhilesh Yadav faction had all its options open.
The body blow for the socialist leader came 72 days after the party he floated and nurtured celebrated its silver jubilee on November 5 amid continued tension with Akhilesh.
Barely three weeks later, the Akhilesh Yadav camp held a national convention where the 43-year-old leader was anointed the national president of the party founded by his father replacing him. Samajwadi Party was one of several parties which emerged after the Janata Dal got fragmented in the early 1990s.
SP, which is primarily an Uttar Pradesh-based party contested Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections around the country, but its successes have largely been limited to the state. In the assembly election in Madhya Pradesh in 2003, the SP won seven seats, making it the third largest party in the state. In the 2012 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, it registered a landslide and formed the government. It would have been a 5th term for Mulayam Singh Yadav as chief minister of state, but he surprised everyone by nominating his son Akhilesh to the coveted position. Samajawadi Party supported to the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre. It had contested the 2009 general election in alliance with Rashtriya Janata Dal and Lok Janshakti Party of Bihar. In the last general election, Samajwadi Party was convincingly defeated by the BJP and its allies in Uttar Pradesh which together won 73 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. SP, before Monday’s poll panel order, was the 13th largest party in Parliament.
