Lucknow: Former UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav was on Thursday unanimously re-elected president of the Samajwadi Party for a period of five years at the party’s 10th national convention in Agra even as his estranged father and party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav skipped the meeting.
The announcement of Akhilesh Yadav’s re-election was made by SP general secretary and returning officer Ram Gopal Yadav.
Earlier, the party’s constitution was amended to extend the tenure of the party chief from three years to five years, ensuring that Akhilesh Yadav will lead the party in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the 2022 UP Assembly polls.
Mulayam Singh and his younger brother Shivpal Yadav stayed away from the convention, making it amply clear that all is still not well within the family despite patch-up attempts by Akhilesh Yadav following a bitter power struggle to head the party.
Akhilesh Yadav, on We-dnesday night, had reportedly spoken with Shivpal Yadav on phone and invited him to attend the convention but the latter expressed his inability to do so.
While Akhilesh Yadav was being re-elected as the party president on Th-ursday morning, Mulay-am Singh Yadav and Shiv-pal Yadav held a closed-door meeting in Lucknow. Both the leaders, who had earlier threatened to launch a new outfit, refused to speak to the media after their meeting.
However, Shivpal Yadav later tweeted to “congratulate and bless” Akhilesh Yadav on his re-election as party president.
Akhilesh Yadav was earlier elected as party president, replacing his father Mulayam Singh Yadav at an emergency delegates’ conference on January 1, intensifying the family feud.
Addressing the national convention, Akhilesh Yadav said that he had spoken to his father thrice and sought his blessings. “I asked him to come to Agra and he said that his blessings were with me and the party,” he said.
Hitting out at the BJP for farmers’ woes, he said that the BJP governme-nt’s loan waiver scheme had proved to be a farce.
The SP chief also taunted the Yogi Adityanath government for its alleged attempts to victimise him politically by holding multiple inquiries into decisions taken by his government.
