The appointment of Shivpal as the Samajwadi Party’s UP unit chief seems to be a placatory gesture as also a signal that Akhilesh is still the most favoured figure to be projected as the party’s Chief Minister face in the 2017 elections.
Advertisement
Amid speculation that the party could convene a parliamentary board meet to diffuse the present crisis, dismissed later by Mr. Ramgopal as gossip, he met the CM here.
It added that Shivpal did not wish to create controversies for the party and was therefore stepping down and would from now on work as an “ordinary” party member. “Mulayam Singh Yadav was very upset and angry when he ordered me to remove Akhilesh from the party post”, he told TOI.
“He (CM) should have been asked to resign and he would have tendered it”. Later at a press interaction at the VVIP guest house where he is staying, the Rajya Sabha member indirectly hit out at his colleague Amar Singh as the “outsider” who was behind the crisis. Ramgopal defended Akhilesh’s right to be assertive. He ended up saying, “All decisions taken in consultation with Netaji, at times decided by own”. In what circumstances did he take this decision, we can’t raise a question mark over that.
In an attack on Amar Singh, Mr. Ramgopal said some leaders had taken “unfair advantage” of Mulayam’s amiable nature over the years and were damaging the party. “Mulayam Singh should think about the people who are doing bad to the party, and those people have been identified”. At this juncture, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, who rushed to Lucknow on Thursday was trying to contain the damage to keep the outfit intact till the elections, sources said. Although the latter attended the meet, Akhilesh chose to give it a skip. “Who joins, who leaves, nobody has the right to decide except Netaji”.
Speaking informally to reporters in Delhi, Mulayam had called Shivpal, who is his younger brother, a grassroots leader who had a happy-go-lucky disposition.
Asked if the power struggle in the family could be contained by reinstating all portfolios held by Shivpal to him again, Ram Gopal answered in the negative and said that a minister was a minister and that departments were of no outcome.
Meanwhile, BSP chief Mayawati criticized the SP for the ongoing “drama” and said it was orchestrated by Mulayam Singh to divert people’s attention.
Advertisement
Sources close to Shivpal had said he gave examples that as a senior minister in the Akhilesh government, he never publicly opposed the decisions taken by Akhilesh or Mulayam even though he may have expressed a difference of opinion to them in private.
