Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav will be expanding his Cabinet on Monday for the seventh and perhaps for the last time, before state assembly election scheduled to take place next year.
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On 25 June, the Samajwadi Party (SP) had revoked its merger with gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s Qaumi Ekta Dal (QEM). It is reported that the chief minister and Mr Ram Gopal Yadav were unrelenting on the issue and said that the QED merger would have an adverse impact on the clean image that Mr Akhilesh Yadav had cultivated over the past four-and-a-half years.
Read: Akhilesh opposes, father Mulayam backs SP merger with Quami Ekta Dal?
Mr Ram Gopal Yadav, the leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha, said the meeting of the Board also authorised the party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav to reconstitute the national executive.
Sources in the party said that after the chief minister made the statement at the function, tension was palpable in the parliamentary board meeting in which notable absentees were Azam Khan and Kironmay Nanda.
On Tuesday, another senior Samajwadi Party leader Shivpal Yadav had announced the merger of the Qaumi Ekta Dal into SP.
But the announcement of the merger had also given fresh ammunition to the opposition parties to pillory the ruling party ahead of the 2017 Assembly elections, saying it showed the “sheer desperation” of SP and raised questions over law and order situation. Mukhtar’s elder brother and QED president Afzal Ansari had contested from Ballia as an independent.
“If my uncle helps me and I accept his suggestion what is wrong in it”.
“The decision was taken by the parliamentary board of the party”. Just before the 2012 assembly elections as well, Akhilesh Yadav had intervened at the last minute to cancel the political alliance between alleged gangster-turned-politician D.P. Yadav and SP.
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It was seen as an exercise to put his stamp on the government.
