Samajwadi Party splits: Shivpal Yadav announces new outfit with Mulayam as chief

Former Uttar Pradesh minister Shivpal Yadav announced on Friday he was breaking away from the Samajwadi Party and starting his own outfit headed by party patriarch and former CM Mulayam Singh Yadav.

The new party would be called Samajwadi Secular Morcha.

"To give Netaji back his honour and to bring all Samajwadis together, the new morcha would be announced soon," Yadav told ANI.

This comes weeks after the Samajwadi Party suffered a bruising defeat in the state elections that was blamed on a months-long feud between Shivpal and his nephew Akhilesh Yadav over control of the party.

Shivpal had recently said that the secular front would be formed if Akhilesh Yadav did not hand over the reins of the party back to his father Mulayam in three



months.

"For social justice, a secular front will be formed. Netaji (Mulayam) will be its National President," Shivpal told reporters in Etawah, the bastion of the Yadav clan.

He had staged a seven-hour long dharna over police atrocities at Vaidpura police station, and warned the party workers to mend their ways or he would form his secular morcha before his deadline of three months.

The warring uncle of Akhilesh made the announcement after a meeting with Mulayam at a relative's house in Etawah.

Shivpal held discussions on forming the new secular front with them.

He, however, did not explain what the new front would do - whether it would contest polls against the SP or strengthen it by bringing socialists under one roof.