'Tipu' Akhilesh Yadav battles with Samajwadi Party's old guard to become Sultan

NEW DELHI: In his battle-to-the-finish brinkmanship with the Samajwadi Party old guard, UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav appears to be looking for a “nuclear deal moment” that would let him stamp his decisive supremacy over detractors like it did for former PM Manmohan Singh during UPA-I.
Defending himself on a public platform and targeting SP leader Amar Singh and confronting uncle Shivpal, two of father Mulayam Singh’s favourites, Akhilesh has not flinched from an escalation of family hostilities.If at all, he seems to have willed it just that way. The timing and context of the young leader’s defiance defies political wisdom.
It comes at the stroke of state elections and after a full tenure often mocked as steered by “four and half CMs”— a disparaging reference to Akhilesh having to bow to party seniors like Shivpal and Azam Khan.
The move does seem a little late for an image makeover and the infighting presents the picture of a power struggle that is likely to put off voters who could see it as a cynical exercise. Add to this perception the doubts the blood-letting would create among Muslims about SP’s winnability, and the confrontation comes across as an act of blind rage bereft of political cunning that the Mulayam clan is known for.
But ‘Tipu’, so called by friends, is seeking to be ‘Sultan’. The attempt is at the same time to salvage his fledgling legacy and to build on it the long future ahead of him.
Somewhere, the Yadav GenNext has calculated that going to polls in the tame manner he ruled for four-and-a-half years would only bring a meek exit. And with BSP and even BJP eyeing their chances, UP may not be bi-polar in coming years and hold no guarantee of an automatic return to power. While he has failed post-2012 to seal the power struggle with covetous cousins and uncles, even rivals admit, with surprise, that Akhilesh has a good image among many sections of UP. He even enjoys some sympathy that he has been hobbled by many uncles like Shivpal and Amar Singh who are used to “old politics”.
It is here that his belated bid to claim ascendance over in-house rivals reminds many of how Manmohan Singh rebuffed CPM towards the end of UPA-I over the “nuclear deal”—shaking of the Left’s yoke on his decisions and emerging as a leader. Of course, the gamble is based on a set of assumptions.
Akhilesh apparently believes that success in vanquishing power rivals, with scalps like Amar Singh or Shivpal, would rally SP’s core constituency and the youth behind him.
It could earn him rich rewards in the polls. But even if he falters, he would have tightened his grip on the party and among its support base, to live to fight another day. It is in search of that “nuclear deal moment” that Akhilesh has pushed for a ruthless power play that nobody, near or distant, ever associated with an innocent visage and an easy smile.