UP Elections 2017: Once Again, Mulayam Singh Picks Brother Shivpal Over Son Akhilesh

Lucknow: Mulayam Singh is apparently unable or unwilling to break his habit of favouring younger brother Shivpal Yadav over son Akhilesh Yadav. Today, the 77-year-old founder of the Samajwadi Party announced that he will make his debut in this campaign on Monday by soliciting votes for his brother in his constituency of Jaswantnagar in Western Uttar Pradesh. "Later" is when his son, the Chief Minister, can expect similar promotional efforts by him, he said, according to news agency ANI.

For virtually all of last year, Mulayam Singh and Shivpal Yadav ganged up on the 43-year-old Chief Minister with unflagging gusto, working to undermine his decisions and to establish that when the time came to finalize the party's strategy for re-election, it was their methods that would serve as the playbook.

In October, Akhilesh Yadav lost his trademark unflappability and, at a gathering of hundreds of party workers, attacked Shivpal Yadav, who was berating him. That event became the inception point for a full-scale effort by Akhilesh Yadav, long coached by another uncle Ram Gopal Yadav, to establish himself as the centrifugal force of the party. Mulayam Singh was replaced as party president by his son, a status change vetted by thousands of Samajwadi delegates, and the Chief Minister made it clear that it was his list of candidates (though he accepted inputs from his father, including the naming of step-brother Prateek Yadav's wife Aparna as a contestant) that would hold good.

Shivpal Yadav has already said that he plans to launch his own party, and is reportedly providing open support to candidates running against the Samajwadi Party in the Yadav zip code of Etawah. Mulayam Singh has doggedly refused to offer any public support for the Chief Minister, opting instead to reiterate his opposition to the alliance struck with the Congress, a partnership that he had rejected before he was displaced as auteur.

In the 2012 election, Mulayam Singh held over 50 rallies urging voters to give his son, then just 37, a chance.  On the party symbol of a cycle, Akhilesh Yadav, now opting for a souped-Mercedes as his mode of transportation, traversed the state, vowing to bring young voters jobs, laptops, a slice of the economic development that was playing out in other states.

Today, Akhilesh Yadav sought to convince voters that he remains an obedient son whose rebellion was in the interest of protecting both Mulayam Singh and the party he set up over two decades ago. "This party belongs to Netaji. When I was young, he used to hit me, sometimes even with sticks, to keep me on the right path. Do you think that relationship will ever go away? Whatever I did was to save Netaji's honour," he said.

Analysts point out the Mulayam Singh still exerts a great pull over voters, particularly older men among his Yadav community, where patriarchal sensibilities are easily offended by the notion of a young man dispensing with an elderly father. Campaigning for the Chief Minister could blunt the possibility of those sympathetic to Mulayam Singh from spurning his son. Now, if only he'd play ball.