Lucknow: Shivpal Yadav, the estranged uncle of Samajwadi Party (SP) chief and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, who had quit the party and floated his own outfit, has rejected any claim of his return into the SP fold or the possibility of a merger between the two outfits.
His party, the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia), issued a public statement on Monday and stated, “It is learnt from social media and few other platforms that news of PSPL Chief Shivpal Yadav joining back Samajwadi Party on September 30, is being propagated. This is completely false, misleading and rooted in baseless facts. No dialogue on the above mentioned issue has taken place yet. The people who conspired to break up the Smajawadi Party and family are the ones who are propagating this news.”
Sources close to Shivpal Yadav also confirmed that the leader won’t be coming back to the SP fold. The speculation of his return came in the backdrop of a recent statement made by the estranged uncle on Friday in which he dropped a major hint of his "homecoming". Though he refused rumours of merger, he kept the door open by saying that if the SP chief approaches, he will think of an alliance. “From my side there are chances of return,” he had said.
Akhilesh Yadav, too, recently suggested that the return of his uncle might be on cards and that his party may withdraw the application seeking the disqualification of his uncle from the Uttar Pradesh Assembly under the anti-defection law. “Doors are always open for everyone, we will take everyone back without a second thought. There is democracy in our family all the members are free to follow the ideology they want to. Unless we grow our family how will we contest elections?” he had said.
SP president Akhilesh has led the party to its worst defeats — in 2014 when he was chief minister, the SP ended up with just five Lok Sabha seats, in 2017 when he became party president it was reduced to 47 seats in the 403-member assembly and in 2019, despite allying with BSP, it could just hold on to its five seats.
On the other hand Shivpal Yadav, who floated his own Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party Lohia (PSPL) last year after a prolonged feud with Akhilesh Yadav, failed to make his presence felt in the Lok Sabha elections.
Comments
0 comment