As deadlock persists within the ruling Samajwadi Party with no amicable solution in sight, the Mulayam Singh Yadav faction has started looking for option B in case election commission freeze the ‘cycle’ symbol of the party. Senior SP leaders close to Mulayam have spoken to leaders of smaller parties and thus they have also approached the old lok Dal, the party founded by former Prime Minister and farmer leader Choudhury Charan Singh. Presently the original lok Dal is led by one Sunil Singh, son of a senior politician Rajendra Singh of Aligarh, who was a close associate of Charan Singh. lok Dal has the old election symbol of farmer ploughing field ( Kheth jotta Kissan), on which Charan Singh had become the chief minister of UP.
lok Dal, wants to contest Uttar Pradesh assembly polls and have already short listed names of 100 candidates. In 2012 elections, lok Dal had contested 76 seats and its candidate though did not win a seat but received 5000 to 15,000 votes in most of the segments. “Couple of leaders close to Mulayam Singh Yadav have approached me and they are interested in contesting the polls on our symbol,” confirmed Sunil Singh.
Though refusing to take the names of the leaders, who had approach him, the lok Dal president said a senior leader very close to Mulayam had a talk with him. “I am solely interested for giving my symbol to Mulayam and let him contest the polls. Mulayam is an old disciple of Charan Singh and was even elected to the legislative council for the first time on this symbol,” he claimed. According to source, Mulayam has approached the lok Dal in order to rake up his claim to the legacy of Chaudhury Charan Singh and being projected as the farmer leader of the country to counter his son Akhilesh Yadav. Sunil Singh had been awarded the lok Dal and its symbol by the election commission after a long legal battle with Charan Singh’s son Ajit Singh, who had to satisfy himself with a new name of Rashtriya lok Dal(RlD) with an election symbol of handpump.