Mulayam Singh Yadav, a veteran politician who saw numerous ups and downs in Uttar Pradesh over the course of his five-decade career, was long associated with the state’s politics.
He was so knowledgeable about the politics of the Indian state with the highest population that both his supporters and critics affectionately referred to him as “Netaji.” Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was born on November 22, 1939, in the Etawah district hamlet of Saifai, climbed fast through the political ranks to serve three times as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and once as the Minister of Defence in the Union Government.
He won seven Lok Sabha elections and ten Vidhan Sabha elections. His political career lasted for a very long time, and controversy followed controversy.
He told the tale of a politician who came close to becoming India’s Prime Minister.
Mulayam Singh’s name was put forth to lead the coalition in 1996, when the United Front was about to form the government. Leaders, notably Lalu Prasad Yadav, opposed it. In 2014, he once more saw an opportunity, but the outcome of the election permanently ruined it. People close to him claimed that the Samajwadi patriarch harboured resentment about his inability to succeed as Prime Minister of India after serving three terms as the chief minister of the nation’s most populous state.
When he was elected an MLA in 1967, at the age of 28, his career officially began. On October 4, 1992, he established the Samajwadi Party, which he quickly developed into a local party centred in Uttar Pradesh. Later, his son, Akhilesh Yadav assumed control of the party and is currently its leader.
His followers assert that Mulayam Singh was prepared to detain LK Advani in 1990 when his Rath Yatra entered Uttar Pradesh. Nevertheless, Lalu Prasad Yadav outdid him by capturing the BJP chief in Samastipur. Following the JP Movement of veteran freedom fighter Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s, both Lalu and Mulayam rose to prominence and later established themselves as “socialist leaders.”
Mulayam Singh was one of the leaders detained and held for 19 months during the Emergency that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s administration implemented in 1975. For the 2008 Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, he supported Congress after opposing it during the emergency.
Mulayam Singh’s political career had still been littered with promises of forming and severing links, despite his reputation as a politician with always-present ears to the ground.
He publicly sided with Chandra Shekhar against VP Singh to start his career. Then, to everyone’s amazement, he formed an agreement with the BSP, the bitter adversary of his party. But with the “guesthouse incident,” the ground-breaking coalition quickly fell apart.
Mulayam occasionally sided with the BJP despite continuing to criticise its Hindutva politics.
For instance, Mulayam Singh Yadav shocked everyone by endorsing the BJP’s effort to elect APJ Abdul Kalam as President of India in 2002.
A picture of Mulayam Singh Yadav and RSS chairman Mohan Bhagwat together at a ceremony caused a stir in political circles the previous year.
Today (October 10) in Gurugram’s Medanta Hospital, Mulayam Singh, 82, passed away from age-related diseases.
Following a decline in his health, he was brought to the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) last Sunday. Following a lung infection, his wife, Sadhana Gupta, passed away in July of this year. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s second wife was named Sadhana Gupta. In 2003, Maalti Devi, his first wife, passed away. Akhilesh Yadav’s mother was Maalti Devi.
