Lucknow: Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, the beating heart of heartland politics for nearly four decades of his 55-year-long political journey, died of multiple age-related ailments at a private hospital in Gurgaon on Monday morning—a month and two weeks shy of his 83rd birthday on November 22. The three-time UP CM, seven-time MP, former defence minister and 10-time MLA is survived by two sons—former UP CM Akhilesh Yadav and Prateek Yadav.
Mulayam, or Netaji to his legions of supporters, had been in and out of hospital for the past three years.
He was admitted to Medanta-The Medicity in Gurgaon on October 1 for renal complications and was put on life support the following day.
He breathed his last at 8.16am Monday. “His immunity levels were low. That’s why his kidneys and other organs got infected, leading to life-threatening bloodstream infections. We did our best,” a doctor said.
At 9.41am, Akhilesh announced in a tweet: “Mere Adarniya Pita Aur Sabke Netaji Nahi Rahe (My respected father and everyone’s Netaji is no more).” His last rites will be performed at his ancestral village Saifai on Tuesday. The UP government has announced three-day state mourning and a state funeral.
Born in 1939 in Saifai village of Etawah district to farmer Sughar Singh Yadav and Murti Devi, Mulayam was a wrestling enthusiast and carried skills honed in the akhada to the political arena, especially his “Charkha Daav”—a deceptive grappling move. He used deception to stop Sonia Gandhi from becoming PM in 1998 and Ajit Singh the CM of UP in 1989.
A disciple of socialist icons Ram Manohar Lohia and Jai Prakash Narayan, he carried forward their legacy till the last, and his socialist movement became a pivot for anti-Congress forces after the grand old party was wiped out from India’s biggest state in 1989. He formed SP in 1992 and it governed UP four times. It is the biggest opposition party after the resurgence of BJP in 2017. He vehemently opposed Akhilesh's move to forge an alliance with Congress in 2017 UP polls, but that time he had become too 'incapacitated' to enforce his wish.
A grassroots “neta”, it’s said that he could name any village in UP from a helicopter. He was the capstone of UP’s backward-class and minority politics in the post-Mandal era, and even earned the nickname “Mullah Mulayam” after he ordered police to fire at Kar Sevaks marching to the disputed Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in October 1990 during his first term as CM.
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