Speculations Of Rift In SP Alliance After Shivpal Yadav’s “Courtesy Meet” With CM Adityanath

Speculations are rife in Uttar Pradesh after Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohiya) chief Shivpal Yadav had a 20 minutes long meeting with UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

PSP-L spokesperson, Deepak Mishra, described the meeting as a “courtesy call” and said to the PTI, “since he (Shivpal Yadav) could not meet the Leader of the House after the elections, he met him today after taking the oath. He also met the Speaker of the UP Legislative Assembly.”

Shivpal Yadav had floated a new political party called the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia (PSP-L) in 2019 after falling out with his nephew and Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav. Both the Samajwadi leaders had been undercutting each other since 2016 and the rift only became severe after the party’s drubbing in 2017. However, a truce was reached with the intervention of the SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Eventually, PSP-L fought the recently concluded assembly elections under an alliance led by the SP. Shivpal himself contested and won from Jaswantnagar seat of Etawah on SP’s symbol. Conspicuously, none of the leaders endorsed by him were given tickets by Akhilesh’s SP.

According to reports, the flutters of a fresh and wide rift between Mulayam Singh’s son and brother came to the fore again after the latter skipped a meeting of opposition MLAs convened by the former on 25 March. Thereafter, Shivpal’s absence from the meeting of SP MLAs on 26 March only fuelled the speculations further.

Shivpal had claimed that he “was not invited to the party meeting” and “waited for two days” while also cancelling all his programs for the meeting, but wasn't invited. “I am an MLA from Samajwadi Party but still not invited,” he lamented. However, Om Prakash Rajbhar of Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, an SP ally, said that there are “no differences in the alliance”.

The word has also been around that Shivpal delayed his oath-taking to signal the tensions between him and Akhilesh. He was sworn in on 30 March, days after other MLAs from SP took the oath. Three other MLAs - Fateh Bahadur Singh, Surendra Maithani, and Ashish Kumar Singh - also took oath on the occasion.

Shivpal Yadav’s meeting with the UP Chief Minister at his official residence at 5 Kalidas Marg is not the only reason behind the speculation that all is not well. After not being invited to the meeting of SP MLAs, Yadav left for Etawah and met former Sirsaganj MLA Hariom Yadav, who left the SP and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), where he also said that BJP’s Hari Om should have won the election.

Next, Shivpal headed to Delhi from Etawah itself where, as per this report, he met a few top BJP leaders. The report further says that Shivpal may align himself with the BJP which, in return, can also nominate him to the Rajya Sabha.

“Very soon, I will talk about everything and tell everything,” said the PSP-L chief when asked if he was contemplating any major decisions in the coming days. And this has served as the biggest fodder for the ongoing conjectures.