There is no love lost between Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav as the latter’s supporters and son have failed to find berth in the jumbo state executive announced by the party.
The Chacha-Bhatija had buried the hatchet in November 2022 ahead of the by-election to Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat caused by the death of party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav in October last year. The bonhomie between Chacha- Bhatija benefitted the party and Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav won the election.
SP had earlier announced the national executive and it was widely anticipated that Aditya Yadav, son of Shivpal Yadav, would be accommodated, but Akhilesh Yadav ignored his cousin. Shivpal Yadav was particularly disappointed as the other members of the family – Dharmendra Yadav, Tej Pratap Yadav and Ram Gopal Yadav’s son Akshay Yadav were accommodated in the national executive.
The 182-member state executive is an attempt towards an image makeover of the party which was dominated by Yadavs. The committee includes 12 Muslims, five Thakurs, two Brahmins while the rest are from the Other Backward Classes, mostly non-Yadavs. The SP state executive was dissolved soon after the 2022 UP assembly elections and the party has completed the organisational exercise as Lok Sabha elections are less than a year away.
SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary said the formation of the party’s new Uttar Pradesh state executive unit was based on its PDA formula.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had recently spelt out his PDA formula for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls as a combination of Pichhade (backward classes), Dalit and Alpsankhyak (minorities). He said it would ensure that the Bharatiya Janata Party bites the dust in the polls next year.
Senior SP member Mohammad Azam Khan’s son Abdullah Azam Khan has been made the state secretary in the new panel. “SP has taken forward ‘PDA’ (backwards, Dalits and minorities) in the list while trying to give due importance to the party cadre,” Rajendra Chaudhury said.
SP’s state executive for Uttar Pradesh will have Irfanul Haq, CL Verma, Shyampal Bind and RS Bind as vice-presidents, and Rajkumar Mishra as treasurer. The unit will have 61 secretaries, 48 members and 62 special invitee members besides others.
In what was seen as an attempt to revamp the party after the debacle in the assembly elections and the Lok Sabha bypolls in its bastions Rampur and Azamgarh, the SP had dissolved the national, state and district executive bodies of all its organisations last year. Only its state president Naresh Uttam Patel was retained.
