Which Conflicts Of The ‘Akhilesh Vs Shivpal Saga’ Are Staged, And Which Ones Genuine? 

The line dividing Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav is now firmly etched. Akhilesh will be the head of the government while Shivpal will manage the Samajwadi Party and its organizations in the state. If one goes by Akhilesh Yadav’s remarks made before the media in Lucknow on Wednesday, their roles have been defined by the party’s national president Mulayam Singh Yadav. “There are some decisions which have been taken with Netaji’s consent and some I have taken myself. All of us abide by whatever Netaji says,” Akhilesh told the media. Making Shivpal the party’s state president in place of Akhilesh was obviously a decision taken by Mulayam. The former PWD minister may not like it but he will have to lump it because it is Mulayam’s decision. The chief minister asserted his authority by divesting Shivpal of key portfolios, sacking Deepak Singhal as chief secretary and axing mining minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati and Raj Kishore Singh, the panchayati raj minister.

All those sacked by Akhilesh are alleged to be highly corrupt with Prajapati also facing a CBI inquiry ordered by the Allahabad High Court itself. Singhal allegedly figures in the controversial CDs involving Amar Singh. A complaint was lodged against him by RTI activist Nutan Thakur in 2015. The two are also said to be close to Shivpal and Mulayam.

The brothers have a strange knack for picking those said to be involved in criminal activities and the corruption for ministerial berths and key positions in bureaucracy. And, as the idiom goes, a leopard can’t change its spots. With assembly elections just a few months away, the Yadav family put up a charade of family discord in which Akhilesh was projected as the hero who stood for righteousness, Shivpal as the villain and Mulayam as behind-the-scene operator and peace maker. The charade had Amar Singh as Shivpal’s sidekick and Ram Gopal Yadav on the side of Akhilesh.

While there may have been a genuine discord between the uncle and his nephew, the show, however, was staged for two reasons. One, Akhilesh was never regarded as a chief minister capable of taking decisions independently. He was no more than a toddler in politics who walked the talk holding the hands of his father and uncles. It was time to prove his authority and show that he had come of age.

Two, despite Akhilesh’s relatively clean image his government did not score high marks on the law and order front and in fighting corruption. What compounded this image was the manner in which it backed those facing allegation of corruption---Noida engineer Yadav Singh, mining minister Prajapati, UP Public Service Commission chairman Anil Yadav et al---and its showdown with the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court on the appointment of Lokayukta .

Though on these issues the chief minister’s hand may have been forced by the family elders, it was he who got stigmatized in the process. Akhilesh had been successful in keeping DP Yadav out of the party before the 2012 assembly elections. In 2016, he was able to avert the merger of mafia don Mukhtar Ansari’s Qaumi Ekta Dal with the Samajwadi Party and that proved to be the breaking point in his relations with his uncle. The QED merger issue is now a festering sore between uncle Shivpal and his chief minister nephew. Akhilesh again snubbed his uncle by sacking Deepak Singhal whom he had to appoint chief secretary, supposedly under pressure from Shivpal and Amar Singh.

To add insult to injury he also dismissed Prajapati and left Shivpal with a minor portfolio of social welfare. Shivpal is said to represent all that is undesirable in the Samajwadi Party and cannot be made the CM face for the coming elections. Conversely, if Akhilesh has to be projected as chief ministerial candidiate, then he has to convince the voter that he is the one who is in control, his father, uncles and Amar Singh notwithstanding. The time is too short for Akhilesh to prove his credentials and the recent developments in the party may not be enough.

For the moment he was happy to announce his rath yatra from October 3.