Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav’s warring uncle, Shivpal Singh Yadav, is set to float a new political party.
Details of the new party are being worked out and it is likely to take shape before the 2019 lok Sabha election.
A former parliamentarian of Samajwadi Party is said to be the key person behind the move to float the proposed party.
“Shivpal Yadav has been engaged in a war of attrition for over two years now. It has yielded nothing and now he is facing existential threat in politics. Hence, he has no option but to charter an independent course to remain relevant in politics,” said a source close to the senior SP leader.
Ever since the 2017 Assembly election, SP sources have maintained that Shivpal is waiting for his expulsion from the party while Akhilesh is waiting for his uncle to leave the outfit on his own.
A close aide of Shivpal said the marginalised leader made several attempts for “peace” with his nephew but to no avail.
“Shivpal made overtures to the party brass and in June last, he also joined the birthday celebration of cousin and SP general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav, considered to be Akhilesh’s man Friday. This signalled rapprochement in Samajwadi Party as Shivpal had then said that there was never a revolt or rift in the party or the family,” the source said.
Now it is being felt that Shivpal has come to a dead end with SP chief Akhilesh Yadav stating categorically that there was no place for the uncle in the party.
After gaining a firm grip over the party after the 2017 Assembly poll, Akhilesh has consistently maintained that the party will welcome anybody and anyone with grievances is free to leave.
“Shivpal can demonstrate his political clout only by floating a new party and contesting the 2019 lok Sabha poll with the objective of cutting into the traditional SP vote bank. And there is no dearth of backers for such a political enterprise ahead of the crucial general elections,” said a SP leader.
The SP leader also predicted that Shivpal’s outfit would certainly inflict a huge damage to the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party alliance in the 2019 election.
Seeds of trouble in Samajwadi Party were sown by the then party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav in March 2012 when he decided to pass the baton to his son Akhilesh and install him as the Chief Minister of UP. This did not go down well with Shivpal.
The battle surfaced four years later in August, 2016 when Shivpal, then PWD Minister, lost his cool and offered to resign from the party and the Cabinet. A month later, Akhilesh retaliated and sacked two loyalists of Shivpal from the Cabinet and in October removed Shivpal also from the Cabinet.
In October itself, Shivpal and Akhilesh publicly traded charges with the later accusing his uncle of planting negative stories in the media and painting him as Aurangzeb.
On December 31 last year, Shivpal staged a coup and then SP chief Mulayam Singh announced the expulsion of Akhilesh from the party. Ram Gopal Yadav rushed to Akhilesh’s rescue and in an emergency SP national convention, Akhilesh was elected the national chief of the SP. In January, after filing his papers from Jaswantnagar Assembly constituency in Etawah, Shivpal had announced to float a new party after the polls. With things not moving his way, the moment for redemption for Shivpal seems to have just arrived.