Last rites of Mulayam Singh Yadav: The last rites of Samajwadi patriarch and three-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, who passed away at a Gurugram Hospital on Monday will be performed at his ancestral home Safai on Tuesday.
Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav early Monday morning tweeted about the veteran Samajwadi leader’s demise.
मेरे आदरणीय पिता जी और सबके नेता जी नहीं रहे। pic.twitter.com/jcXyL9trsM
— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) October 10, 2022
आदरणीय नेताजी का आज दिनांक 10/10/2022 को सुबह गुरुग्राम के मेदांता अस्पताल में निधन हो गया। उनके पार्थिव शरीर को सैफ़ई ले जाया जा रहा है।
कल दिनांक 11/10/2022 को दोपहर तीन बजे सैफई में अंतिम संस्कार होगा।
— Samajwadi Party (@samajwadiparty) October 10, 2022
A party source said that it has been decided not to bring the mortal remains to Lucknow in view of torrential rains in the state capital.
Condolence started pouring in since the news of the SP supremo was announced. President Droupadi Murmu expressed grief on the demise of veteran politician and Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday, saying his death is an “irreparable loss” to the country.
“The death of Shri Mulayam Singh Yadav is an irreparable loss to the country. The achievements of Mulayam Singh Yadav ji, who came from an ordinary environment, were extraordinary. ‘Dharti Putra’ Mulayam ji was a down-to-earth veteran leader. He was respected by people of all parties. My deepest condolences to his family members and supporters!” the Rashtrapati Bhavan tweeted.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, several Union ministers and many political leaders from different political parties expressed condolences on the demise of Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Mulayam Singh Yadav was 82 and had been on life support system since the past one week. He was admitted to the Medanta hospital in Gurugram on August 22.
According to hospital sources, he breathed his last at 8.15 a.m. on Monday.
The 82-year-old Samajwadi Party patriarch was facing difficulty in breathing and was under the supervision of an internal medicine expert at the Medanta Hospital, as per sources. Singh was suffering from a urinary infection as well, hospital sources had said.
On Sunday, Medanta Hospital had put out a health bulletin stating that the veteran leader’s condition was quite critical and that he was on life-saving drugs.
Mulayam Singh Yadav had been under critical condition for the past few days.
The veteran Samajwadi leader, who passed away at Gurugram’s Medanta Hospital due to age-related ailments, was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of the hospital last Sunday after his health deteriorated.
Mulayam Singh Yadav’s wife, Sadhana Gupta, passed away in July this year following a lung infection. Sadhana Gupta was Mulayam Singh Yadav’s second wife. His first wife Maalti Devi passed away in 2003. Maalti Devi was the mother of Akhilesh Yadav.
A true son of the soil
Mulayam Singh Yadav was known as ‘Dhartiputra’ and remained a true son of the soil. His style of politics was firmly grounded and success and failure did not affect him.
The veteran Samajwadi leader was one of the last of his generation of politicians who kept his values intact and did not corporatize his politics.
For him, the last man in the line remained important – whether it was from his family, his village or his state. He was a friend of friends and even turned his foes into friends.
Mulayam Singh Yadav had first contested the Assembly election from Karhal in 1967 on Ram Manohar Lohia’s Samyukta Socialist Party ticket.
Groomed by the likes of Ram Manohar Lohia and Raj Narain, Yadav served eight terms as the member of the state Assembly.
For a long time, Mulayam Singh Yadav who saw Uttar Pradesh go through many ups and downs during his five-decade-long career, remained synonymous with the politics of the state.
‘Netaji’ for the class and the masses
In fact, he was so well-versed in the politics of the most populous state of India that he was fondly called “Netaji” by his admirers as well as his detractors.
Born on November 22, 1939, in Saifai village of Etawah district, Mulayam Singh Yadav rose quickly in politics and became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh thrice; he also served in the Union Government once as the Defence Minister. He was elected 10 times as MLA and 7 times as Lok Sabha MP.
Samajwadi patriarch and three-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav played a key role in the formation of the United Front government at the Centre.
As long was his political career, a similar number of controversies surrounded it. His was the story of a politician who almost became the Prime Minister of India.
In 1996, when the United Front was poised to form the government, Mulayam Singh’s name was floated to lead the alliance. It was opposed by leaders, including Lalu Prasad Yadav. He again saw an opportunity in 2014 but the election results dampened the possibility forever. People close to him said that the Samajwadi patriarch nursed a grievance that he could not become the Prime Minister of India despite being the chief minister of the most-populous state three times.
His career began when he was elected an MLA in 1967 at the age of 28. He founded the Samajwadi Party on October 4, 1992, and soon turned it into a regional party based in Uttar Pradesh. His son Akhilesh Yadav took over the reins of the party later and is now its president.
Popular across party lines
In 1990, his supporters claim, Mulayam Singh was set to arrest LK Advani when the latter’s Rath Yatra entered Uttar Pradesh. However, Lalu Prasad Yadav upstaged him by arresting the BJP patriarch in Samastipur. Both Lalu and Mulayam emerged after the JP Movement of the veteran freedom fighter Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s and later built their careers as “socialist leaders”.
In 1975, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government imposed the Emergency, Mulayam Singh was among the politicians who were arrested and imprisoned for 19 months. While he opposed Congress during the Emergency, he supported it in 2008 for the Indo-Us nuclear deal.
Often referred to as a politician whose ears were always close to the ground, Mulayam Singh’s career had been strewn with promises of building and breaking ties nonetheless.
He launched his career by openly siding with Chandra Shekhar against VP Singh. He then surprised everyone by forging an alliance with his party’s arch-rival BSP. But the path-breaking alliance soon broke up amid the “guesthouse incident”.
While Mulayam remained critical of the BJP’s Hindutva politics, he sided with the saffron party at times. For example, Mulayam Singh Yadav surprised everyone by supporting BJP in 2002 in its bid to make APJ Abdul Kalam the President of India.
Last year, a photo of Mulayam Singh Yadav with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at a function had created a flutter in political circles.