LUCKNOW: Acrimony, bitter exchanges and personal attacks today marked a meeting of Samajwadi Party leaders, bringing to the fore the high-voltage power struggle in the first family with Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav trading barbs while the chief minister was accused of planning to float a party, a charge he denied.
Cut up with his son, Mulayam Singh Yadav put up a strong defence of his brother Shivpal Yadav, who was sacked by Akhilesh yesterday from his cabinet, and General Secretary Amar Singh but ruled out replacing the chief minister, who offered to quit.
The political drama was also punctuated by clashes between rival factions outside and inside the venue and after the abrupt end to the meeting of the legislators, MPs and ministers.
Seeking to put at rest speculation, Akhilesh ruled out forming any new party and offered to step down if Mulayam Singh Yadav wanted.
With his father and uncle watching, he broke down while addressing the meeting.
“Let ‘netaji’ (Mulayam) install a chief minister who he feels is honest,” he said.
“Why should I form a new party?” he posed in an emotionally choked voice.
At the meeting Akhilesh said all these years he had toiled hard for the welfare of the people.
“Merey pita, merey guru hain (my father is my guru)” he said.
The Chief Minister said many people were trying to create divisions within his family using various machinations and that he had taught himself how to oppose any wrong doing.
Tension was palpable much before the meeting began with youth supporters of Akhilesh mounting pressure on the leadership in support of the chief minister.
Amid talks that Akhilesh could give a miss to the silver
jubilee celebrations of the party, the chief minister said, “Rath be chaley, sthapana diwas be maney (my rath yatra will go on and establishment day of the party will be celebrated).”
Akhilesh will embark on his ‘rath yatra’ on November 3, two days ahead of the silver jubilee event, which gave rise to speculation that he would skip the big show to express his displeasure over the recent developments in the party.
The chief minister said that he had connected with the masses with the help of Samajwadi Pension Yojana.
“People kept criticising me, but I went ahead keeping my promises to them,” he said.
An angry Akhilesh targeted Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh for the current developments saying that he (Amar) had hinted that some “major changes” would take place in October.
At the same time, the chief minister said that if he had said something beyond his limit, he should be pardoned.
When his turn came, Mulayam Singh said the party was facing a difficult situation and party members should not fight with each other. But his words had little effect as chaos broke out at the venue and heated words were exchanged on the dais leading to an abrupt end of the meeting.
Both the father and son shouted at each other at the meeting.
“I can’t tolerate anything against Amar and Shivpal. Amar saved me from going to jail,” Mulayam said admonishing Akhilesh for attacking Amar Singh.
“Amar has helped me a lot. If Amar was not there I would have been in jail, he is like my brother,” Mulayam said, describing the Rajya Sabha member as his brother.
Mulayam said mere donning of red cap (colour of SP’s cap) does not make one Samajwadi.(Agencies)
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