Man behind letter bomb has been Akhilesh's friend since school

LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party's freshly minted stormy petrel, MLC Udayveer Singh, is a JNU alumnus. While being in the party , he has joined the ranks of opposition politicians like BSP chief Mayawati who recently said Mulayam should retire. To her unsolicited advice, Udayveer has added that the patriarch ought to step down in favour of his son, Akhilesh Yadav.
In his early 40s now, Udayveer was Akhilesh's classmate and their friendship goes back over 30 years. The two studied together at the military academy in Dhaulpur from class VI to class XII, after which Akhilesh went abroad for higher studies. Udayveer joined St John's College, Agra, and later went to the Jawaharlal Nehru University for postgraduation, eventually obtaining a PhD in political science from there.

“I was the one who formed the Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha (the student wing of SP) while in JNU and took the socialist movement further, although it's also true that once I left the campus, there was no one to continue it,“ Udayveer told TOI after lobbing his “letter bomb“.

Their common friends say Udayveer quit his job in 2000 as a lecturer on contract in a degree college in Agra to join Akhilesh in his political career. It was his boring of planks for Akhilesh that is said to have led to Akhilesh's first election victory in the Ferozabad Lok Sabha election.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Udayveer worked for Akhilesh's wife Dimple Yadav's election but she lost.

“Akhilesh knows we lost that election because of some `Vibhishans' (a reference to Ravana's brother who caused his downfall) in the party,“ said Udayveer, who won his election spurs by entering the legislative council in February this year after a long stint as secretary of the Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha and the Samajwadi Yuvajan Sabha.

Udayveer has said Akhilesh is being challenged at a time when his popularity is at its peak. He said the Yadav scion has dwarfed all past and present CMs through his development work, social welfare programmes and sensitivity to the poor.

“Akhilesh is the most popular and undisputed leader of the party . He has marched ahead, and everyone in the party should follow him to ensure SP returns to power after 2017 elections,“ Udayveer said.