Shivpal gets Maya's former bungalow

A new-found bonhomie between the BJP and rebel Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Shivpal Singh Yadav, who broke away from the SP, seems to be growing as he was on Friday allotted a sprawling bungalow recently vacated by BSP supremo Mayawati.

Shivpal recently formed his own outfit and vowed to contest all the seats in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. According to official sources here, the bungalow was allotted to the Samajwadi Secular morcha, the outfit floated by Shivpal after he broke away from his elder brother Mulayam Singh Yadav and nephew Akhilesh Yadav's SP.

Mayawati recently vacated the bungalow following a direction from the Supreme Court.

The decision by the Estate Department, headed by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, to allot the sprawling bungalow to Shivpal assumed significance as the BJP has been trying to "woo" Shivpal ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

Recently, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya proposed to Shivpal to merge his Morcha with the BJP and assured him an important post in the party. Shivpal, too, heaped praise on Adityanath and called him an "honest" man, who was "doing a good job."

The BJP felt that Shivpal could prove to be a "spoiler" for the grand alliance if he formed his own outfit and put up its candidates in the state for the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

Though Shivpal said that his outfit will not have any truck with the BJP, sources said that there may be some kind of understanding between them in the next Lok Sabha polls.

Shivpal, who had been having estranged relations with Akhilesh since the latter sacked him from the post of party general secretary and as a minister in 2016, had dropped hints that he could "charter a different course" if his "isolation" in the party continued.

DH News Service