Samajwadi Party’s alliance with Mahan Dal headed by Keshav Dev Maurya has finally ended on a bitter note with Akhilesh Yadav asking his former ally to return the luxury SUV gifted to him at the time of forging alliance for the March 2022 UP assembly elections.

“It is a deliberate insult heaped on us by Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav. He had given the vehicle to us during Diwali last year. I had never sought any facility from the Samajwadi Party and Akhilesh Yadav had given the vehicle on his own volition. I have already returned the vehicle to the SP. I got a message from the Samajwadi Party office for returning the SUV and I told them that the vehicle has already been returned,” said Keshav Dev Maurya, president of the Mahan Dal.

Chandra Prakash, son of Keshav Dev Maurya, and his wife Suman had contested the last assembly election on Samajwadi Party symbol and both lost the poll.  Chandra Maurya had contested from Bilsi seat in Budaun and Suman from Farrukhabad.

The relations of the Samajwadi Party with allies Mahan Dal and Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP) were strained as the SP refused to share seats with both the parties in the Rajya Sabha and UP Legislative Council elections. Following the denial of seats in these polls, Keshav Dev Maurya had recently announced to break the alliance with the Samajwadi Party.

The SBSP had termed the list of candidates released by the Samajwadi Party for UP Legislative Council election as “disappointing”.

SBSP chief Om Prakash Rajbhar had been lobbying for a berth for his son Arvind Rajbhar in the UP Legislative Council. Rajbhar, however, maintained that he was in the SP-led alliance and would extend full support for victory of candidates not only in the UP Council polls but also in the bypolls to Azamgarh and Rampur Lok Sabha seats.

Bypolls to these parliamentary constituencies were necessitated after the election of senior SP leader Mohammad Azam Khan and party chief Akhilesh Yadav to UP Assembly in March.

Sources in Samajwadi Party, however, said that just after mounting a challenge to the Bharatiya Janata Party in recent UP Assembly election, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav faced the challenge  of saving the party’s bastions Azamgarh and Rampur in the Lok Sabha bypolls due on June 23. Both are prestige seats, having been vacated by Akhilesh Yadav himself and by party stalwart Azam Khan.

The other challenge is internal: quelling dissension from uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav and Azam Khan. The first has a strong internal component too, mapped by the drama that preceded candidate selection — the party managed to finalise names just hours before the nomination process ended.