Former UP CM Mulayam Singh Yadav dies after prolonged illness

Samajwadi Party (SP) founder and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav died on Monday at a private hospital at Gurugram after prolonged illness.

A ten-time MLA and seven-time MP, Yadav was moved to the critical care unit (CCU) and was on life support for the past several days, after his condition deteriorated. He breathed his last around nine in the morning.

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He will be cremated in his native village of Saifai in Uttar Pradesh’s Mainpuri district on Tuesday. A three-day mourning has been declared in the state as condolences poured in from all political leaders.

His son and current SP president Akhilesh Yadav announced the party founder’s death through his official Twitter handle.

Considered as one of the strongest OBC (other backward classes) leaders in Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam served as the chief minister of India’s largest state three times—in 1989, 1993 and 2003 before passing the mantle to Akhilesh after his party stormed to power in the state in 2012 assembly polls. Mulayam also served as the Union defence minister in 1996.

Born on November 29, 1939, at Saifai village, Mulayam became the member of the UP assembly for the first time in 1967. He represented Jaswant Nagar, Sahaswan and Gunnaur assembly constituencies in the state assembly. Mulayam also represented Azamgarh, Mainpuri and Sambhal seats in the Lok Sabha.

A wrestler in his initial days, Mulayam also worked as a teacher at an inter college in Karhal in Mainpuri district, before taking a plunge in active politics.

Mulayam, a staunch supporter of socialist ideologue Ram Manohar Lohia, founded the Samajwadi Party in 1992 after parting ways with former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar. He was arrested during the Emergency and spent 19 months in jail.

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Mulayam was credited with bringing together the electorally influential Yadav and Muslim communities, and his party remained unchallenged for a long time in the Yadav belt in the western UP region.

Considered to be an astute politician, Mulayam allied with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the UP Assembly polls in 1993 and the alliance managed to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party, even though the saffron party, at the time, was riding high on the Ram Temple movement. The elections were held barely a year after the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.

The SP-BSP alliance, however, did not last long and Mulayam was ousted from power after the BSP withdrew support and joined hands with the BJP in 1995. Mulayam, however, managed to engineer a split in the BSP in 2003, and became chief minister with the help of the rebel BSP MLAs.

Popular as “Netaji” among his supporters, Mulayam, much to the surprise of his younger brother and SP co-founder Shivpal Singh Yadav, allowed Akhilesh to become the chief minister after his party secured majority in the 2012 assembly polls in UP.

As Mulayam gradually became less active owing to illness, his grip on his political clan began to loosen; it culminated in Shivpal’s expulsion from the SP in 2016. At an SP convention, Akhilesh was declared party’s national president replacing Mulayam.

The SP founder tried his best to bring Akhilesh and Shivpal together but could not succeed.

In his long political career Mulayam courted controversy on several occasions. He had, while commenting on the infamous Badayun gangrape, remarked, “Boys will be boys and may commit mistakes”. He also surprised the opposition when he said, during a debate in Lok Sabha in 2019, that he wanted to see Narendra Modi again become the prime minister of the country.