Acrimonious scenes were on Monday witnessed at the meeting of the Samajwadi Party where Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son chief mnister Akhilesh Yadav exchanged heated words

LUCKNOW: Acrimonious scenes were on Monday witnessed at the meeting of the Samajwadi Party where Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son chief mnister Akhilesh Yadav exchanged heated words, with the party supremo making clear his support for Amar Singh, describing him as his “brother” and Shivpal Yadav as “mass leader”.

However, Mulayam made it clear that Akhilesh Yadav will remain in the party.

The SP supremo said the party was facing a difficult situation and party members should not fight with each other but his words had little effect as chaos broke out at the venue and heated words were exchanged on the dais leading to an abrupt end of the meeting.

The crisis in the ruling party seems to have worsened with Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav shouting at each other at the meeting.

Fresh clashes broke out outside the venue with supporters of rival sides exchanging blows, giving police a tough time.

At a meeting of party legislators, MPs and ministers, which ended abruptly, Mulayam said, “I can’t tolerate anything against Amar and Shivpal. Amar saved me from going to jail”.

Mulayam said mere donning of red cap (colour of SP’s cap) does not make one Samajwadi.

Admonishing Akhilesh, the party supremo said he had been abusing Amar Singh.

“Amar has helped me a lot. If Amar was not there I would have been in jail, he is like my brother,” Mulayam said, describing the Rajya Sabha member as his brother.

“Some ministers are just sycophants,” he added.

“I cannot forget the work done by Shivpal Yadav,” he said while describing Shivpal as a mass leader.

“We are facing difficult situation, we should remove our weakness and not fight with each other,” Mulayam said.

The tussle in the party began last month when Mulayam replaced 43-year-old Akhilesh with his 61-year-old uncle Shivpal to the post of UP party chief, and also expelled several youth leaders seen as close to Akhilesh.

Shivpal’s sacking yesterday came a day after a close aide of Akhilesh Yadav, MLC Udayveer Singh was expelled from the Samajwadi Party. Udayveer was sacked a few days after he shot off a stinging letter to Mulayam accusing his second wife of hatching a conspiracy against the Chief Minister.

While asking Mulayam to clarify on his political successor, Udayveer also demanded that Akhilesh be made the party’s national president so that there was no room for speculation or doubt.

Udayveer had earlier this week announced that he along with other Akhilesh loyalists would boycott the SP’s silver jubilee celebrations in protest protest the expulsion of many of their colleagues by Mulayam and Shivpal.

Bureau Report