Twist to the tale Shivpal meets Adityanath as distance from SP grows

Akhilesh had invited Shivpal along with his alliance partners — Om Prakash Rajbhar, Pallavi Patel and Rajpal Balyan — for a meeting at the SP office on March 29, which Shivpal did not attend.

Although Shivpal remained tight-lipped after his meeting with the Chief Minister — he did not tweet the photo of the meeting — his party called it a “mere courtesy visit”.

Asked about the meeting, PSPL chief spokesperson Deepak Mishra said, “Shivpalji is one of the senior-most members of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly and Adityanath ji, apart from being the Chief Minister, is also the leader of the House. So, no political meaning should be derived from their meeting. In the past too, the CM had sought his (Shivpal) experience as being a senior member of the House. It was merely a courtesy meeting as earlier in the day Shivpal ji had a meeting with the Speaker as well.”

A PSPL leader, however, said “Ab aur nahi jhukenge (we won’t bend anymore)”, adding that they felt “humiliated” when they were reduced to just an “alliance partner”, even after accepting to contest the Assembly polls on SP tickets.

Shivpal, one of the founder members of the SP, had parted ways with the party after his tussle with his nephew and then UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav ahead of the 2017 Assembly elections, and later he formed the PSPL.

However, despite not seeing each other eye to eye for almost five years, both set aside their differences before going to the 2022 Assembly elections. Shivpal also agreed that all the PSPL candidates would contest under the SP symbol. Shivpal, too, contested on an SP ticket and won the Jaswantnagar seat.

However, after the results, when the first meeting of the SP Legislatures Party was called to appoint Akhilesh as their leader, Shivpal claimed that he was not invited. And, despite having contested on the SP ticket, he was considered an “alliance partner”.

Unhappy over being ignored by the SP, Shivpal, who won from Jaswantnagar seat, had not even taken oath as an SP MLA in the House.

It was only on Wednesday when the PSPL chief and five other party MLAs took the oath and later decided to meet Adityanath.

However, asked about Shivpal not being invited to the SP Legislature Party meeting despite having contested as an SP candidate, Mishra said, “Shivpal ji was not just a candidate. He was also a star campaigner of the Samajwadi Party. So, he should have been invited.”

The other MLAs who took oath on Wednesday were Fateh Bahadur Singh from Caimpiyarganj (Gorakhpur), Surendra Maithani from Govindnagar (Kanpur) and Ashish Kumar Singh from Bilgram-Mallawa (Hardoi).