Akhilesh totally unlike me, he failed in 2014: Mulayam

NEW DELHI: The feud in Samajwadi Party’s first family that has broken out now has been simmering since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s critical remarks against Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow on Monday reflected the patriarch’s disillusionment with his son for the party’s dismal performance in 2014.
ET has been privy to several such informal chats the SP chief had with party workers who called on him in his party chamber in Parliament, since 2014.

“The youth flocked to BJP,” Mulayam told visiting party workers soon after 2014 elections.

This was in contrast to his euphoria in 2012 over Akhilesh, when he claimed “the youth voted in droves for Akhilesh.” Mulayam had hoped to retain the party’s 2012 form to take a shot at the prime ministership and was shell shocked by the outcome when SP’s representation shrunk to five members — all from the first family — in the Lok Sabha.

Mulayam found the defeat hard to digest as he had crushed BJP and Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s dreams for another term by reducing BJP to 10 Lok Sabha seats, in 2004, the previous time SP was in power in Lucknow when Lok Sabha polls were held. He was not ready to accept that SP was washed away by the Modi wave of 2014.

That 2014 continued to rankle him was evident when Mulayam pointed to Narendra Modi’s hard work to tell his son to “get off his high horse.” While Mulayam has turned sceptical of the primacy of the youth at the expense of rigorous party work, Akhilesh has turned towards promoting his youth coterie and took a leaf out of Modi’s publicity blitzkrieg to avoid a repeat of 2014.

These differing takeaways of 2014 by Mulayam-Shivpal on the one hand and Akhilesh on the other is at the core of the current feud, ahead of 2017 assembly elections.

Mulayam had during one of his informal chats with partymen hinted that Akhilesh was not able to manage the post of CM and state unit chief in the same fashion he had done.

“Akhilesh is not like me when I used to be party president and CM. He can focus on government, and Shivpal will have to focus on organisation.

Shivpal may appear amusing, but he knows everything about the organisation. Shivpal will make a great difference in the coming days in the organisation,” Mulayam had said in one of his informal chats in April, which was critical of Akhilesh’s organisational skills and made it clear that he would provide a free hand to Shivpal in running the party apparatus.

On another occasion he said: “It is not Akhilesh’s cup of tea…cadres are asking me to lead from the front for 2017 elections.” Netaji has reaffirmed his plan when he showed Akhilesh his place by letting him be the CM while lending weight to Shivpal in party matters. But his son doesn’t seem to have taken kindly to this.