Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was fondly called “Netaji” by his admirers as well as his detractors, was born on November 22, 1939, in Saifai village of Etawah district. The Samajwadi Party patriarch 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.
Yadav’s passing at the age of 82 has left a void in the party.
Yadav, one of six children, was nurtured in a low-income agricultural family close to Etawah in what is now west-central Uttar Pradesh. Although he attended college and eventually earned a master’s in political science from Agra University; his first career goal was to be a wrestler.
At the age of 15, when he came across the writings of the Indian socialist Ram Manohar Lohia, he became active in politics. Yadav’s activities based on those ideals shaped his later political career. Lohia’s beliefs about the equality of peoples and other social justice concerns had a significant impact on Yadav.
When Yadav secured a seat in the lower house of the Uttar Pradesh state legislative assembly in 1967, it was his first electoral success. He was reelected in 1974, but his tenure was cut short when he was detained for 19 months in 1975 as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi instituted a national state of emergency.
He was one of the opposition politicians detained during this time.
He ran for reelection to the assembly in 1977 after being freed. Yadav also rose to the position of Lok Dal (People’s Party) president in Uttar Pradesh in 1977. He led the Lok Dal group in the state later that year, following the division of that party. After being chosen as the state’s Janata Dal (JD; also known as the People’s Party) president in 1980, Yadav lost his attempt for reelection to the lower house of the state parliament later that year. However, succeed in winning a seat in the upper house of the legislature in 1982, where he led the opposition until 1985. In 1985, Yadav was once again voted to the lower-house legislature, where he served as the leader of the opposition until 1987.
Mulayam Singh Yadav’s 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.
Mulayam Singh Yadav was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996, and he almost became India’s prime minister. However, JD’s HD Deve Gowda, who had become the United Front (UF) coalition government’s consensus nominee, outperformed him in that effort (of which SP was a member).
In 1998 and 1999, he was chosen to serve in the Lok Sabha again. In the 2002 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the SP staged a stunning return, winning a majority of seats but not all of them.
But after a brief BSP-BJP coalition government fell apart in 2003, the SP cobbled together its own ruling alliance, and Yadav was elected chief minister for the third time.
The SP was overwhelmingly defeated by the BSP in the 2007 state legislature elections. Before being re-elected to the Lok Sabha in 2009, Yadav served as the opposition’s leader in the assembly from 2007 to 2009.
The SP completely prevailed in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections at the beginning of 2012. He contested his last election in 2019 and won. Yadav continued to remain the party’s head, but he resigned so that his son, Akhilesh Yadav, could take over. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the senior Yadav was re-elected, although his party only managed to get five seats in the house.
Mulayam Singh passed away at the age of 82 at Gurugram’s Medanta Hospital today due to age-related ailments.
He was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of the hospital last Sunday after his health deteriorated. His 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.
(With inputs from Rachna)