“He was unique, there was no other leader like him.” This was how Dal Singh Yadav, the lone surviving MLA from the UP elections of 1967 when Mulayam Singh Yadav was elected to the State Assembly for the first time, recalled his association with the man who went on to establish the Samajwadi Party 25 years later. “We were from different parties but similar backgrounds. I first met him in the Assembly in March 1967. We were of the same age, around 28, and maintained a friendship ever since,” Dal Singh, now 83 and “ten months older” than Mulayam, told The Indian Express hours after the SP supremo passed away in a Delhi hospital. In 1967, Mulayam was elected on a Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) ticket from Jaswant Nagar in Etawah district and Dal Singh on a Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) ticket from Jalalabad in Shahjahanpur district. Dal Singh had defeated a Congress candidate that year and Mulayam his rival from the Republican Party of India (RPI). But both of them lost their seats in the mid-term polls two years later. “In that Assembly (of 1967), Chandra Bhanu Gupta was sworn in as Chief Minister at first but less than three weeks later, Chaudhary Charan Singh took oath as Chief Minister of the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal government. Mulayam and I were not made ministers but we spoke frequently on the issues of agriculture and rural poverty on which we were in agreement. Chaudhary saheb (Charan Singh) often appreciated our views. Those days, Charan Singh was a stalwart and we were beginners.we studied Chaudhary saheb's books and speeches on various issues,” Dal Singh said. Asked about the qualities of Mulayam that he appreciated, he said, “He was always ready to help anyone from any party. He never said 'no' to work. Once you are in contact with him, he becomes your friend forever.” Dal Singh represented BJS, the previous version of the BJP, in 1967 and 1974 — on both occasions from Jalalabad.
