AMN /
Former Uttar Pradesh minister Shivpal Yadav today announced that he was breaking away from the Samajwadi Party and starting his own outfit headed by party patriarch and former CM Mulayam Singh Yadav.
He told media persons in Etawah that the new party would be called Samajwadi Secular Morcha. Shivpal had said recently 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.
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.
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.