Mulayam Singh called off the party meeting scheduled for Thursday, asked candidates to prepare for polls
Highlights
- Mulayam Singh calls off party meet, asks candidates to focus on UP polls
- Samajwadi Party split on Sunday; workers, leaders backing Akhilesh Yadav
- Mulayam may meet Amar Singh, Akhilesh to visit Election Commission today
Mulayam Singh Yadav, shared a car with his brother Shivpal Yadav and close friend Amar Singh, as he travelled to the Election Commission's office in Delhi to stake claim to the "cycle" symbol of the Samajwadi Party that he founded 25 years ago. His son and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has sent aides to the Election Commission to make the same claim, after he was declared the party's chief at a meeting in Lucknow attended by a large number of Samajwadi Party leaders and workers. "Samajwadi Party's election symbol is my signature," Mulayam Singh Yadav has said.
Here are the top 10 developments in this big story:
The Samajwadi Party split on Sunday with Akhilesh Yadav being declared top boss in place of his father at a massive show of strength in a public ground in Lucknow. Mulayam Singh has declared Akhilesh's meeting and its decisions "illegal."
But he has cancelled a party meeting he had called on Thursday, December 5, and has asked candidates to head to their constituencies and prepare for the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, to be announced any day this week. The meeting was likely to have been poorly attended with most party workers and leaders siding with his son.
"Nobody can accuse me of anything, I have never done anything wrong," said Mulayam Singh on Monday morning, dismissing reports that he is unwell.
Given that the UP assembly elections are round the corner, the Election Commission could freeze the "cycle" symbol instead of hurriedly granting it to any one faction.
Akhilesh Yadav tweeted late on Sunday night, "Sometimes to protect the ones you love you must make the right decision. What I did today was a tough decision but one that I had to take." As he staged a coup in the morning, the 43-year-old repeatedly expressed his gratitude and love for his father.
At the Lucknow meeting on Sunday, the Akhilesh camp proposed that 77-year-old Mulayam Singh Yadav should now play the role of mentor. It also dislodged Shivpal Yadav as the party's UP chief and proposed that Amar Singh be thrown out of the party.
On Friday, Mulayam Singh had sacked Akhilesh Yadav and Ram Gopal Yadav from the party after the Chief Minister refused to accept the candidates chosen by Mulayam Singh for the UP elections and released a list of his own. Mulayam Singh Yadav had revoked the expulsion the next day.
The split is the result of a bitter tussle for control of the party for months as Akhilesh Yadav has accused Shivpal Yadav and Amar Singh of instigating his father Mulayam Singh against him.
The BJP has dismissed the Samajwadi Party feud as an elaborate "drama" to win Akhilesh Yadav public sympathy ahead of the crucial UP elections seen as a semi-final before the 2019 national election. To win a second term Akhilesh Yadav will have to get past strong challenges from the BJP and Mayawati's BSP.
At a mega rally in Lucknow today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi attacked the Samajwadi Party, accusing it on running UP into the ground in the last five years. He asked how a party that can't solve a family problem, solve the problems of the vast state.
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