Veteran politician and Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav passed away on Monday at the age of 82. He had b��een 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 shift🔯ed to the ICU on October 2.
"Mere adarniya pitaji aur sabke netaji nahi rahe - Akhilesh Yadav,&🐈quot; 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 Yada൩v j💙i'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 t♏ook to T🐠witter 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 a💮s a grounded leader," he shared on Twitter.
Yadav had been 🐽in and outಌ 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, most🍰ly 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 Yada꧒v played out his politics, be𓄧ginning 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 mantlꦜe 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 t꧅o a degree.
A “socialist”, Yadav was open to possibilities in politics. Thanks often to mergers and s꧒plits, 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)
