Akhilesh is leading the Samajwadi Party's fight against the opposition's main electoral plank—poor law and order situation in UP
On August 24, the eve of Janmashtami, the Uttar Pradesh information department sent a text to all accredited journalists in Lucknow— Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav wanted to meet them at 1pm the next day; cameras and cell phones were not allowed. The informal meeting lasted two hours and Akhilesh played the perfect host, reassuring journalists that he would personally look into their problems.
Akhilesh's exclusive meeting with journalists was a first by any UP chief minister. But then the assembly polls are round the corner and the ruling Samajwadi Party has been receiving a lot of bad press. Senior SP leaders say the recent controversies have over- shadowed the good work he has done.
Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav was worried when son Akhilesh and brother Shivpal Yadav locked horns over the aborted merger of the Quami Ekta Dal, an eastern UP-based party, into the SP. Akhilesh was not in Lucknow when Shivpal announced that the Dal had merged with the SP. The Dal is led by the Ansari brothers—Afzal, Mukhtar and Sibgatulla. Mukhtar is MLA from Mau, and Sibgatulla from Mohammadabad. The merger was engineered by minister Balram Yadav, a close confidant of Mulayam. Enraged by the merger news, Akhilesh fired Balram.
The chief minister's stand was that the merger was a setback to his attempts to clean the SP of criminal elements. Mukhtar is in jail over murder charges. Shivpal had backed the merger eyeing the Muslim vote bank in Ghazipur and neighbouring areas, where the Dal holds sway.
In 2012, senior SP leaders, including Shivpal, had favoured fielding D.P. Yadav, a tainted politician from western UP, in the assembly elections.
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