Mafia don turned politician Mukhtar Ansari, on Tuesday, ruled out all possibilities of his party Qaumi Ekta Dal’s (QED) merger into the Samajwadi Party. He also ruled out the possibility of alliance or electoral understanding with the ruling Samajwadi Party. Dismissing the reports in a section of media speculating that the talks of merger of his party with the Samajwadi Party have been revived Mukhtar Ansari said, “the chapter is closed and there will be no merger or alliance with the SP and we will contest the assembly election on our own strength’’. Mukhtar Ansari, who is lodged in jail since 2005 on the charge of the murder of BJP MlA Krishnanand Rai, was here to attend the monsoon session of the state assembly.
It may be recalled that the Qaumi Ekta Dal merger into the Samajwadi Party had been announced on June 21 by senior minister and state in charge of the Samajwadi party Shivpal Yadav in the presence of QED president Afzal Ansari, the former MP of the Samajwadi Party from Ghazipur.
However, the merger of the QED with the SP was strongly opposed by the chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, who is also the state president of the SP. The SP was forced to convene the meeting of the parliamentary board which after threadbare discussion decided to cancel the merger on June 25.
Chief Minister was so incensed by the merger that he sacked the senior minister Balram Yadav from the cabinet who had played a key role in the merger of the QE with the SP. The cancellation of the merger led to differences between Mr Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal who saw this as a personal insult.
Over the weekend, SP president Mulayam Singh Yadav tried to broker peace between the warring faction in his family and this renewed talks of a QED merger with SP. However, QED leader Sibgatullah Ansari QED MlA fr5om Mohamadi in Ghazipur district said that “after so much bad blood within the first family of the Samajwadi party over the merger there was no point in talking of merger or alliance with the Samajwadi Party and face further humiliation later on’’.
The QED has its own area of influence among Muslim voters in districts of eastern UP that include Ghazipur, Ballia, Mau, Chandauli, Varanasi, Azamgarh and Deoria.The Samajwadi Party, apparently, wanted to cash in on the goodwill of QED in these districts. Earlier in the day, Mukhtar Ansari had a 45-minute meeting with Shivpal Yadav in his office in the Vidhan Bhawan but said that he had come to discuss developmental issues related to his constituency. Shivpal Yadav refused to comment on his talks with Mukhtar Ansari.