Veteran politician and Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav passed away on Monday at the age of 82. He had been critical and on lifesaving drugs in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at a hospital in Gurugram. The 82-year-old had been under treatment at the hospital since August 22 and was shifted to the ICU on October 2.
"Mere adarniya pitaji aur sabke netaji nahi rahe - Akhilesh Yadav," the SP tweeted from its Twitter handle.
Yadav had been administered with life-saving drugs earlier, as per a statement by the Medanta Hospital in Gurugram where Yadav was being treated. "Mulayam Singh Yadav ji's condition is quite critical today and he is on life saving drugs. He is being treated in the ICU of Medanta Hospital, Gurugram, by a comprehensive team of specialists," the hospital had said in a health bulletin.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter to condole the SP leader's death as well. "Mulayam Singh Yadav's demise pains me; he was a remarkable personality and was widely admired as a grounded leader," he shared on Twitter.
Yadav had been in and out of hospitals in recent years, triggering scares over his health each time. The patriarch died at a Gurugram hospital six weeks short of his 83rd birthday.
Born on November 22, 1939 into a farming family in Saifai near Etawah in Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav spawned the state’s most prominent political clan. He was elected an MLA 10 times and an MP, mostly from Mainpuri and Azamgarh, seven times. He was also the Defence Minister (1996-98), and chief minister thrice (1989–91, 1993–95, and 2003–07).
For decades, he enjoyed the stature of a national leader but UP largely remained the “akhara” where Yadav played out his politics, beginning as a teenager who was influenced by socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia.
For party workers, even when he was no longer the SP president – the mantle passed on to his son Akhilesh Yadav in 2017 – the patriarch remained “Netaji”, the leader. And his presence on the scene provided the glue that held the Yadav clan together, at least to a degree.
A “socialist”, Yadav was open to possibilities in politics. Thanks often to mergers and splits, he had been affiliated with a series of parties -- Lohia’s Sanyukt Socialist Party, Charan Singh’s Bharatiya Kranti Dal, Bharatiya Lok Dal and Samajwadi Janata Party. He founded his own SP in 1992.
(With inputs from PTI)
