Family scrap behind Mulayam’s decision to fight from two seats?

LUCKNOW: When Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav declared that he would contest the Lok Sabha elections from Azamgarh, apart from his traditional seat Mainpuri, the perception was that this was the old wrestler's way of declaring that he was ready to take on Narendra Modi in eastern UP.

However, clear-eyed political observers believe the choice of the second seat could have been influenced by an escalating fight between UP CM Akhilesh Yadav and his half-brother Prateek Yadav.

Sources said that Prateek, Mulayam's son from his second marriage, was keen to make his electoral debut in this year's LS polls. While it would have been in keeping with the career trajectories of other children in the Yadav clan — cousins Dharmendra and Akshaya and Akhilesh's wife Dimple are in the LS fray while cousin Aditya is chairman of a state cooperative federation despite being just 25 — Prateek's ambitions did not go down well with the partisans of the UP CM.

SP watchers say that while Mulayam, torn between competing affection for his sons, decided that election-eve was not the time to precipitate a crisis, he did not dismiss Prateek's claim on Azamgarh, reckoned to be a safe seat because of the preponderance of Yadavs and Muslims.

Party insiders also say that Mulayam's decision, while dressed up as a brave "secular" intervention, was actually his way of "reserving" the seat so that it could be offered to a candidate of his choice, possibly Prateek, at a time of his choosing.

Speculation that Mulayam will eventually leave the seat for Prateek refused to dissipate on Wednesday despite a strong rebuttal by SP general secretary Ramgopal Yadav. Mulayam had taken a similar route in 1999 when he launched Akhilesh into the electoral arena. He had contested from both Mainpuri and Kannauj in that election, and vacated the latter for Akhilesh.

Political circles found the buzz about the family feud to be credible because while Mulayam's family gives the impression of being a giant cohesive unit to the world outside, insiders lament that all is not that well. Information filtering out of the sprawling clan suggests that the Yadav satrap often has to play peacemaker between the families of his two wives — Malti Devi and Sadhna Gupta. Akhilesh's mother Malti Devi passed away in 2003 and those who have known the family from close quarters say that till very late, he didn't have a good rapport with Sadhna, whom Mulayam married sometime in the late 1980s.

Mulayam's second family in fact remained little known till 2004 when Sadhna and Prateek made their public appearance for the first time when the family was shifting to the chief minister's house after SP came to power. Mulayam acknowledged the existence of the second wife and son only in 2007 when he filed an affidavit in Supreme Court in the disproportionate assets case.

Although Mulayam has accommodated Sadhna's relatives both in the party and the government, insiders say she nurtures great political ambitions for her son Prateek. Not only this, she is also learned to take keen interest in the posting of bureaucrats and has raised her own band of loyalists both in the party and the government. This, insiders say, has created a divide in the family with Mulayam's cousin Ramgopal Yadav siding with Akhilesh and brother Shivpal siding with the second family.

The fresh fissures in UP's first family became apparent when a Samajwadi ditty rendered by Prateek's wife Aparna "Aao mil kar desh banayen" — which was launched with much fanfare by Akhilesh at the Saifai Mahotsav in January — was not included in the party's election campaign CD that was released recently.