Why EC went against Mulayam

In his fight against son Akhilesh for controlling the party, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav could not produce any document to support his claim.

The Election Commission (EC) found that Mulayam’s group could not substantiate any of his claims about the “real strength” he commanded in the party, “despite several opportunities given to it”.

The party patriarch’s mere contention that the convention called by the chief minister was “illegal” did not hold water, according to the poll panel. 

The EC also found that under Mulayam’s leadership, the proceedings and the conduct of the party with regard to its internal matters had not adhered to its constitution for a long time.

The poll panel, in its order recognising Akhilesh as heading the real Samajwadi Party, said, “Except for vague allegations, despite several opportunities given to it, the Mulayam Singh Yadav group neither filed any affidavit by any member nor indicated even the name of one member whose affidavit was considered by him to be suspect, or questioned the numbers claimed by Ramgopal Yadav either on January 13 at the time of hearing or at any time thereafter”.

The panel noted that “at the hearing, the learned counsel for his group wanted to make a mountain of a mole hill by referring to the typographical mistake of the word ‘help’ instead of the word ‘held’ in some of the affidavits filed by the other group”.

The commission said, “But he had no answer when a more glaring mistake was pointed out to him by the learned counsel for the other group in the letter dated January 3 of Amar Singh, where he had stated about the ‘illegibility’ of January 1, 2017, convention of Samajwadi Party and unconstitutionality of the resolution passed thereby.”

The panel said it was clear that “Akhilesh Yadav enjoyed overwhelming majority support, both among the legislative and organisational wing of the party”.

“As a logical consequence of the above finding and applying the test of majority support approved by the Supreme Court in the case of Sadiq Ali (Congress O) and consistently applied by the commission thereafter in all cases of disputes... the commission holds that the group led by Akhilesh Yadav is the Samajwadi Party and is entitled to use its name and its reserved symbol ‘bicycle’...,” the commission stated.