Shivpal Singh Yadav, who heads Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia), termed Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav’s offer to leave one seat for his uncle’s party in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls “a cruel joke”.
Shivpal Yadav and nephew Akhilesh fell out politically following a protracted Yadav family feud over the control of the party when Akhilesh was the chief minister of UP.
Shivpal said his party was looking for a handful of winnable seats for the PSPL to enter into any alliance with SP.
Shivpal said in Etawah on Sunday that he would launch his party’s poll campaign with a rally in Meerut on Monday and from December 24 onwards his party would launch a state-wide village-level contact programme over farmers’ issues.
The day before Diwali, Akhilesh Yadav had said in Saifai, Etawah that his party would make an “adjustment” and leave Shivpal’s Jaswantnagar seat. He said he would also make Shivpal Yadav a cabinet minister when the SP returned to power in the state.
Shivpal is the sitting MLA from Jaswantnagar.
In response, Shivpal dismissed the offer. “The one-seat offer is a joke. So far as the idea of being accommodated as cabinet minister is concerned, I have been a cabinet minister several times. So, it is not a big deal. What we are looking for is a handful of winnable seats,” he said.
He reiterated that all socialist parties must come on a single platform if they wished to defeat the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.