Express News Service
LUCKNOW: In the wake of voices of dissent emanating from certain quarters of the Samajwadi Party, party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav has become suddenly active.
On Friday, Mulayam held a 90-minute-long closed-door meeting with son and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav at the party headquarters in the state capital.
The father-son duo had visited their stronghold of Mainpuri two days ago and had given a pep talk to the party workers. The Friday meeting was in fact the second time that Mulayam and Akhilesh had gotten together in the past 48 hours.
With rising wrangling in the party’s first family and speculations about Shivpal Yadav joining the saffron brigade doing the rounds, the meeting is being seen as a gesture by the party patriarch to send out a message that he was standing by son Akhilesh.
Political observers feel the recent developments within the SP — starting from Shivpal’s expression of dismay over the treatment meted out to him, Sambhal MP Shafiqur Rehman Barq’s diatribe expressing discontent over the way the party had been dealing with minority issues, Azam Khan’s close aide accusing Akhilesh of neglecting the Rampur MLA and SP RS MP Sukhram Yadav’s latest move of meeting CM Yogi Adityanath — have all unsettled the party cadre.
“Mulayam is a seasoned politician and he wants to give an impression that he and Akhilesh are on the same page on all party-related issues. He wants to convey that he is with Akhilesh in every situation — victory and defeat,” said AK Mishra, a political scientist, adding that the party patriarch might have shared some pearls of wisdom with the son over party matters and the dissensions cropping up.
Highly-placed SP sources said Mulayam arrived at the party office unannounced on Friday afternoon and was joined by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav an hour later since he (Akhilesh) was returning from his constituency Karhal.
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As mentioned earlier, the two spent almost 90 minutes together before some other leaders joined them. Thereafter, Mulayam left the party office. Akhilesh held a couple of meetings with SP leaders before he called it a day.
