With a few months to go for the Uttar Pradesh elections, the Yadav clan that has been at the helm of affairs in the ruling Samajwadi Party is facing an unprecedented rupture. In 2012, when SP supremo Mulayam Singh anointed his son Akhilesh Yadav as the chief minister overlooking the claims of Shivpal Yadav, Mulayam’s brother and senior party leader, it was a transition that proceeded smoothly. Akhilesh, with his youthful appeal and his promise of the SP turning over a new leaf, had played a major role in convincing the UP electorate that the lawlessness, which marked the SP’s earlier tenure between 2002 and 2007, would not repeat. With national ambitions to boot, Mulayam was content to allow Akhilesh, Shivpal and Azam Khan to run the show in UP but the watchful father and the meddlesome “chachas” have proved more than a handful for Akhilesh. While Mulayam has proved to be the government’s biggest critic regularly embarrassing Akhilesh on various counts, Shivpal and Azam have run parallel administrations, frequently giving the impression that Akhilesh was not fully in control of his own government.
But Mulayam’s stern warning to Akhilesh that the party would split up into factions if Shivpal chose to walk away is a clear indication that he fears the worst. Shivpal had threatened to resign claiming that his repeated pleas to root out corruption was going unheeded. Shivpal has been sulking for a while now. After his name was dragged into the Mathura Jawahar Bagh shootout case and the landgrab controversy, Shivpal was upset that the other leaders in the Yadav kin failed to rise to his defence. When Akhilesh publicly nixed the merger of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s Qaumi Ekta Dal with the SP, Shivpal felt he was publicly humiliated by his nephew.
There comes a time in many a political career where the politician must make peace with his or her prospects in a political party. Often ambitious leaders find themselves being marginalised or perceive, rightly or wrongly, that their contributions to the party have not been acknowledged properly.
Shivpal appears to be in such a situation. He has always deferred to elder brother, Mulayam Singh, who opened avenues to politics for his entire clan, making it perhaps the largest political dynasty in the country presently. It is no secret that Shivpal has harboured chief ministerial ambitions and did not take too kindly to his claims being overlooked in 2012. This is where Mulayam is on weak wicket. He has struggled hard to convey the impression that he is an unsparing father who will not hesitate to take his son to task. But Shivpal and the SP know very well that Akhilesh is his father’s political heir and others will be expected to pay second fiddle to the father and son.
Mulayam has acknowledged Shivpal’s strengths noting how widely he tours the entire state and commands a sizeable following in the SP. Dynastic politics have always been messy affairs when there is more than one claimant to a political legacy. Political parties like the DMK, Telugu Desam, Shiv Sena, NCP, National Conference and Akali Dal have struggled with resolving the ambitions of multiple claimants to the legacy of their respective supreme leaders. Unlike family-owned businesses which have been hived up after disputes, family-run political parties do not have the luxury of effecting harmonious partitions. A fragmentation of the vote bank, here the Yadav community, will help no one in the Yadav clan. It remains to be seen if the demands of political survival will soften the sore egos that threatens to undermine the formidable dynasty that Mulayam built.
