The Mulayam family saga: From power and glory to bitter feuds

Akhilesh Yadav

Mulayam’s son Akhilesh Yadav emerged as his political successor, becoming not only the UP CM in 2012 but also the SP national president. Easing out his father from the SP chief’s post, Akhilesh took charge of the party in 2016-17. On September 29 this year, Akhilesh was elected the SP national president for the third time at a party convention in Lucknow. Mulayam skipped all three party conventions where Akhilesh was elected as the party president.

While he took over as the CM for the first time as a Janata Dal leader, Mulayam floated the SP in 1992 with colleagues like Beni Prasad Verma and Reoti Raman Singh after the Janata Dal disintegrated. The same year, his cousin Ramgopal Yadav was elected to the Rajya Sabha, while younger brother Shivpal Yadav became the Etawah Cooperative Bank chairman. Two years after the setback in the 2007 Assembly polls clinched by the BSP, Mulayam began encouraging Akhilesh, then an MP, to spend more time in Lucknow and meet party leaders and workers as he had future plans for him.

When the SP won majority in the 2012 Assembly elections, a section of senior party leaders wanted Mulayam to take over as the CM again. However, Mulayam decided to pick Akhilesh for the CM’s post, sensing in it an ideal opportunity to establish Akhilesh in politics. Sources said that while Shivpal was then reluctant to accept Akhilesh as the CM, Ramgopal and other family members stood by Mulayam’s decision.

Akhilesh, son of Mulayam’s first wife late Malti Devi, joined politics in 2000 at the age of 26 years, contesting and winning the Lok Sabha bypoll from Kannauj. Senior party leader Janeshwar Mishra had insisted that he should enter politics by contesting that bypoll. He went on to win the seat in the 2004 and 2009 elections.

Ahead of the 2012 Assembly elections, the SP projected Akhilesh as its “youth face”. The SP’s triumph in the elections with a majority on its own for the first time was seen as a victory of his work. A proud Mulayam watched as Akhilesh took over as the CM.

In 2009, Akhilesh proposed his wife Dimple Yadav’s name as the party’s candidate in the byelection for the Firozabad parliamentary seat. In the general elections earlier that year, Akhilesh, who had also won from Kannauj, had vacated his Firozabad seat. Dimple, who was seen as a reluctant politician, lost to the Congress’s Raj Babbar, a former SP leader whose plank against her was “parivarwad (nepotism)” and alleged corruption in her party. In 2012, after Akhilesh moved back to UP to take over as the CM, Dimple was elected unopposed from Kannauj, her first win. In the 2014 polls, she retained the SP bastion, which she lost in 2019.

Ramgopal Yadav

Ramgopal Yadav, who is currently the SP’s principal general secretary, had entered politics as the block head of Basrehar in Etawah in 1988, just a year before Mulayam became the CM for the first time. Within four years, Mulayam sent him to the Rajya Sabha. He was elected to the Lok Sabha once, in 2004, when Mulayam was the CM for the third time. A key organisation leader in the SP, Ramgopal is known as the party’s face in Delhi.

Ramgopal’s son Akshay Yadav was elected as the MP from Firozabad in 2014 at the age of 27 years. While the SP ticket allotted to him had fanned tension between Ramgopal and Shivpal, Akshay has now largely kept away from party activities and also the goings-on in their native belts of Etawah and Mainpuri.

Shivpal Yadav

Shivpal Yadav, who had been a powerful minister in the Akhilesh cabinet and the then SP UP president, is currently an MLA from Jaswantnagar in Etawah. In 1996, as Mulayam moved to the Centre as defence minister, he asked Shivpal to contest from his Jaswantnagar seat. Till August 2016, Shivpal’s wife Sarla was the Etawah District Cooperative Bank director.

Shivpal was appointed as the SP UP president for the first time in 2009. While Akhilesh was an MP at the time, he replaced Shivpal in this position after a few months.

In 2014, the buzz about growing differences between Shivpal and Ramgopal started making their way out of close-knit party circles after Mulayam chose to field Ramgopal’s son Akshay from the Firozabad Lok Sabha seat that year. Shivpal, who wanted the same for his son Aditya, protested before Mulayam. He reportedly believed that Akhilesh had a hand in it. Shivpal parted ways following a dispute with Akhilesh in 2016-17, and subsequently floated his own political outfit Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia). He won the 2022 Assembly poll from Jaswantnagar on the SP’s ticket though. Shivpal’s son Aditya became the chairman of the UP Pradeshik Cooperative Federation Ltd.

Prateek, Aparna, Dharmendra, Tej Pratap, and others

Prateek Yadav, son of Mulayam’s second wife Sadhna Yadav, stays away from politics unlike his wife Aparna Yadav. SP insiders say that it was his mother Sadhna who had initially pushed Prateek to join politics and contest the 2014 parliamentary polls.

Some Mulayam supporters from Azamgarh had even staged demonstrations at the party office in Lucknow in 2013 to demand a ticket for Prateek for the 2014 polls. The episode however came to an end after Prateek did not show any interest and reportedly suggested that his mother instead promote Aparna.

Shivpal is believed to have helped Aparna, who runs an NGO, get the SP ticket for contesting the 2017 Assembly election from the Lucknow Cantonment constituency, which she lost. She joined the BJP just before the 2022 Assembly polls.

The son of Mulayam’s brother Abhay Ram, Dharmendra Yadav, 44, was elected as the MP from Badaun in 2004, 2009 and 2014. He however lost the seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He also suffered defeat in the Azamgarh Lok Sabha bypoll in June this year, which was necessitated following the resignation of Akhilesh, who retained his Assembly seat won in this year’s Assembly polls.

Mulayam’s niece Sandhya Yadav, elected as the Mainpuri district panchayat chairperson, was asked to contest the panchayat polls as the SP’s first family wanted to retain this position. She won the election under the supervision of Ramgopal and Dharmendra.

Mulayam’s grandnephew Tej Pratap Singh Yadav, who is also RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s son-in-law, was elected as the MP at the age of 26 years from Mainpuri in a 2014 bypoll after Mulayam vacated the seat to retain his Lok Sabha constituency of Azamgarh. His mother Mridula Yadav was elected as the Saifai block head in 2015.

SP family feuds

The bickerings within Mulayam’s family had started soon after he decided that Akhilesh will be the CM following the SP’s 2012 poll triumph. Sources said that Shivpal was against Mulayam’s move. As the Akhilesh government entered its last lap in 2016, and the rifts within the party widened, Mulayam often rebuked his son and his ministers publicly. Earlier it appeared to be a bid to project

the impression of a “concerned Mulayam” in public, but Akhilesh later started pushing back and found Ramgopal to be almost always on his side.

The feuds surfaced for the first time in June 2016, when Shivpal backed the merger of the Quami Ekta Dal (QED) with the SP but it was called off by the SP Parliamentary Board under pressure from the then CM Akhilesh, who did not want to tie up with the QED’s founder Mukhtar Ansari, a known strongman, and his family. Shivpal was then the power minister and an influential leader in the SP organisation.

On September 13, 2016, the SP family conflict intensified as CM Akhilesh divested uncle Shivpal of all ministerial portfolios after Mulayam replaced Akhilesh with Shivpal as the state party president. In an apparent retaliation, Shivpal expelled seven loyalists of Akhilesh, including MLCs and chiefs of youth frontal organisations, for their alleged “derogatory remarks” against Mulayam when they demonstrated in protest against Akhilesh’s removal as the state SP chief.

On October 23, 2016, the warring factions of Akhilesh and Shivpal cracked down on leaders from the other camp. After Akhilesh sacked Shivpal and three of his close ministers from the government, Mulayam expelled Ramgopal from the party for six years. Ramgopal that day had released a letter stating “They want Akhilesh to lose, come what may. Our thinking is positive, theirs is negative. Those who gave their blood for the party, faced humiliation are with the CM. On the other side are people who have earned billions, indulged in unethical acts, misused power.” Ramgopal was however reinducted into the party a few days later.

Akhilesh and Shivpal shared the stage once again at the SP’s silver jubilee event in Lucknow on November 5, 2016, when a severe strain in their relations was visible in their words and on their faces. In his speech, Shivpal asked the party workers to end groupism and project a united front. Addressing Akhilesh, he also said, “Aap bura maan gaye the jab ek baar maine kaha tha ki kuch logon ko virasat me mil jata hai, aur kuch log jeevan bhar kaam karte reh jaate hain, unhe kuch nahin milta. Aur kuch logon ne chaaploosi kar li, wo poora maza le gaye (You felt hurt when I once said that some people inherit, while others get nothing despite working all their lives. And the sycophants are enjoying full benefits).”

Akhilesh had then hit back from the same dais. Pointing towards Gayatri Prasad Prajapati, a minister who he had sacked over graft allegations but later reinducted on Mulayam’s insistence, the then CM said, “Prajapati has presented me a sword. You give me a sword but don’t want me to use it.”

With Mulayam, who was on the stage, choosing to stay silent on the issue, RJD chief Lalu had then played a peacemaker as he brought Akhilesh and Shivpal together on the stage, raised their hands that held the swords gifted on the occasion, and asked Akhilesh to seek his uncle’s blessings while pulling Shivpal’s hand to bless him. “By bringing Shivpal and Akhilesh together before you, I have proved that there is no feud,” Lalu then claimed.

However, Lalu’s effort proved futile as on December 30, 2016, the SP family conflict hit a flashpoint when Mulayam expelled both Akhilesh and Ramgopal from the party for six years on charges of “gross indiscipline”, a day after Akhilesh put out his own list of 235 candidates for the 2017 Assembly polls, including many who did not figure in the list issued by Mulayam a day earlier.

Three days later, the SP national executive “unanimously” elected Akhilesh as the party’s national president. Mulayam and Shivpal were not present at the meeting, but soon afterwards Mulayam rejected its decision. At the same meeting, the SP national executive also passed a resolution removing Shivpal as the party’s UP chief. Hours later Akhilesh appointed his loyalist Naresh Uttam, a non-Yadav OBC, as the party’s new state president.

Shivpal won the Jaswantnagar seat on the SP ticket in the 2017 UP Assembly election, but later went on to float his outfit, the PSP(L). His fledgling party fielded about 30 candidates in UP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, all of whom lost the polls. He himself contested from Firozabad and garnered 91,869 votes, where the margin between the winner, the BJP’s Chandra Sen Jadon, and the runner-up, SP candidate Akshay Yadav, was only 28,781 votes. The dent made by Shivpal to the SP’s prospects in the state was thus also perceived to be a factor in the defeat of Ramgopal’s son Akshay in Firozabad.

Ahead of the 2022 UP Assembly polls, Shivpal and Akhilesh met once again and decided to contest the elections together to consolidate their traditional Yadav vote bank. However, Akhilesh later gave ticket to only Shivpal, who contested and won from

Jaswantnagar. Their differences, however, again came to the fore later when Shivpal cross-voted in favour of the BJP-led NDA’s nominee Droupadi Murmu in the Presidential election. Subsequently, the SP shot off a letter to Shivpal, stating “Mananaiya Shivpal Singh Yadav ji, agar aapko lagta hai, kahin jyada samman milega to wahan jaane ke liye aap swatantra hain (If you think that you will get more respect elsewhere, you are free to go there)”.

In the run-up to the 2022 polls, Aparna Yadav campaigned for the saffron party across the state. During the polls, Shivpal confined himself to his seat. However, Mulayam campaigned for Akhilesh in his Karhal constituency.