Samajwadi Party has literally been throwing a party for all the drama enthusiasts by putting up a family feud of a lifetime between Patriarch Mulayam and his firstborn Akhilesh. We had recently published a report about a leaked email which claimed the whole victimization of Akhilesh by removing him from the party and the family feud was a scripted affair based on the suggestion of their political adviser Steve Jarding. This theory of course denied by all people concerned.
Now after Akhilesh was removed from the party and again admitted back, another drama unfolded where father and son locked horns over who should be allotted the ‘Cycle’ symbol of the party with both Mulayam’s and Akhilesh’s supposed factions staking their claim. The affair was pretty dramatic after the Election Commission heard both side’s arguments for about 5 hours on 13th Jan which were presented by senior lawyers like Rajeev Dhavan and Kapil Sibal in favor of Akhilesh and former solicitor general Mohan Parasaran and RC Dhingra presented Mulayam’s side. Akhilesh won after the election commission recognized his faction as the real Samajwadi Party and assigned the cycle symbol on 16h January. This might mean that Akhilesh is now the official defining face of the party ahead of Mulayam.
Interestingly or in a “You gotta be kidding me!” way even this fiasco could have been scripted.According to this report, father Mulayam didn’t put up any serious fight to ensure that he won the SC ruling. First, as per the ruling neither did Mulayam claim there was a split nor did he produce any documents which suggested he had the support of members of the legislative party which would have inferred that there indeed was a dispute between him and Akhilesh in the first place. A lawyer who was present at the rulings was apparently befuddled by the fact that shrewd Mulayam could take “such a silly line“.
This raised questions as to whether he indeed was serious in taking on Akhilesh. The only other explantion could be Mulayam just threw in the towel and did not make a fight out of it.
Further credence was provided to the ‘fixed match’ theory by @IndiaBTL who put out documents of the EC order:
So clearly Akhilesh had the support of 4716 out of 5731 delegates which either shows that Mulayam’s popularity within the SP had completely dwindled or that he ensured that his son had the required numbers.
These other documents further provide credence to the fixed match theory as Mulayam didn’t even file a single affidavit of any delegate or MP or MLA in support of his claim to the party on January 9th and also failed to do so after EC gave them another reminder on 10th January.
So in short Mulayam didn’t even try to fight against Akhilesh and the logic that he couldn’t procure the support of even a single delegate or MP or MLA is not very convincing to say the least.
Now with Akhilesh as the main election face it remains to be seen if the supposed drama and fixed match reaps political benefits for the SP in the coming election.
