All is not well with SP.Hours after meeting Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, his uncle Shivpal Yadav resigned from the state cabinet and as the chief of Samajwadi Party’s state unit, indicating a failure of the efforts to broker peace.
The Chief Minister is yet to accept it, sources said. The two had a 20-minute meeting this evening in what was seen as a bid to end the feud that has shaken the party five months before the state assembly elections.
The resignation came after Chief Mnister Akhilesh Yadav refused to return key portfolios to Shivpal Yadav that he had been divested of earlier this week, sources said.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh came down from Delhi in a bid to find a solution to the crisis. Though he is living in the same house with the Chief Minister, it is not known if the two have met.
Mulayam Singh has already met Shivpal, his favourite brother, twice, to hear his part of the story. On Wednesday, Shivpal had rushed off to Delhi for a four-hour meeting. The two met again this afternoon after Mulayam Singh reached Lucknow.
The rift within had been growing for months but the crisis came on Tuesday, hours after Mulayam Singh removed Akhilesh as the state party chief and appointed Shivpal. The move was widely seen as a punishment for the Chief Minister’s run-in with Shivpal.
But the Yadavs said that there is no dispute within the family and also the party.
The Mulayam family has been dogged by serious differences but matters reached a flash point yesterday after Chief Minister shunted out Chief Secretary Deepak Singhal, considered as his uncle Shivpal Yadav’s favourite.
In a tit-for-tat action, Mulayam took away the post of UP Samajwadi Party chief from his son Akhilesh, perhaps to smooth the ruffled feathers of Shivpal.
But, within hours a peeved chief minister hit back by clipping his uncle’s wings by divesting him of his key PWD, Irrigation and Cooperative portfolios.
