It has been almost a month since the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party faced a humiliating defeat in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections and registered their worst ever performance.
The cadres of both the parties are demoralised and want the organisation to be revived before the Lok Sabha elections. But their leaders, apparently, could not care less. SP president Akhilesh Yadav and BSP president Mayawati seem to be caught in a time warp and do not seem interested in picking up the threads. The SP, which was reduced to just 47 seats, has not yet bothered to discuss the reasons that led to its humiliating defeat. Akhilesh Yadav remains shut in his ivory tower, snaps at party leaders and blames his defeat on the BJP’s “misleading campaign” and the family feud. “He continues to behave like a Chief Minister and is inaccessible to ordinary workers. He has yet to convene a meeting of senior leaders where the factors responsible for the defeat can be discussed threadbare. If this attitude continues, the SP is undoubtedly heading for disintegration in the coming months,” said a senior party leader. Resignations in the SP have started trickling in. State women wing chief Shweta Singh resigned from the party this week and state executive member Sudhir Singh also put in his papers after levelling serious allegations against party leaders.
Akhilesh is now planning to expel uncle Shivpal and precipitate the crisis in the party. Samajwadi patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav has already mounted a blistering attack on his son, accusing the latter of humiliating him. Shivpal, the estranged uncle of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, has stayed away from all meetings of newly elected legislators—he alleged he was not even invited.
Senior SP leader Azam Khan has also started distancing himself from Akhilesh Yadav, and Aparna Yadav, the former CM’s sister-in-law, has joined the family feud by claiming that she lost the elections because of people close to her. Sources claim that even after the defeat, Akhilesh has not bothered to meet his father and other senior leaders. His relationship with the Congress has also cooled off and this was evident when Rahul Gandhi lauded the loan waiver decision by the Yogi Adityanath government this week whereas Akhilesh Yadav criticised it. Both the parties are going their own ways on this issue. Mayawati is following a similar pattern after the BSP hit rock bottom by winning only 19 seats. Instead of introspecting on her campaign which, sources claim, led to reverse polarisation and hugely benefitted the BJP, Mayawati has chosen to blame the EVM tampering for her defeat.
Two key aides of the BSP president, Kamla Kant Gautam and Gangaram Ambedkar, resigned from the party after the election results came out and have now formed an alternate political forum called “Mission Suraksha Parishad”. The BSP is also facing a revolt in its ranks and BSP leader Naseemuddin Siddiqui faced angry workers in Meerut, Moradabad and Muzaffarnagar when he went there to address meetings.