UP elections 2017: Akhilesh Yadav's efforts to emulate Vajpayee will be in vain

File of image of Akhilesh Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav. PTI[/caption]Does this hold true for Akhilesh as well?If the running feud between various factions of the Yadav clan is any indication, Akhilesh is keen to step out of the shadow of his father. Insiders in the Uttar Pradesh government say that the chief minister is convinced of having an upper hand in the forthcoming elections on the basis of his image as the "suave, well-behaved" scion of the family being hemmed in by crooks. For the past two months, Mulayam has been insistent that the party he had so assiduously built with his blood, sweat and tears would run as per his diktat. This was clearly indicated by the Samajwadi Party supremo when the party’s list of candidates for the election included those who Akhilesh steadfastly opposed. Meanwhile, a few names known to be favourites of Akhilesh were left out.It would be naïve in this context to assume that Akhilesh is averse to the criminalisation of politics and opposed to his father. In reality, his near-five term in Uttar Pradesh was marked by hooliganism at its worst. All over the state, criminal gangs owing allegiance to his regime were let loose and then only recently contained. A series of communal riots took place across the state in the past five years. The embers of the Muzaffarnagar riots are still smoldering while the Hindutva forces are banking on communal polarisation in western Uttar Pradesh to reap a political harvest.There is a marked difference in Mulayam and Akhilesh's respective styles of governance. While Mulayam — despite his patronage to criminals and mafias — was known to be a hands-on guy for the bureaucracy and quite effective in checking criminals when he desired, Akhilesh appeared as a helpless chief minister who had a tendency to ignore inconvenient truths about his governance by talking about development. But beneath his suave and soft-spoken exterior lay a highly superstitious chief minister who shunned visiting Noida through his tenure in the belief that such a visit would bring an end to his regime. Remember how he avoided visiting Noida when the beef controversy claimed the life of Mohammed Akhlaq in Noida's Dadri town.In one of his public interactions, he blamed officials for not letting him visit Noida, as their own misdeeds would apparently be exposed.Perhaps nobody knows the vulnerability of Akhilesh more than Mulayam. It is with good reason that he has been rebuking his son publicly for ignoring the contributions of leaders like Shivpal Yadav and Amar Singh. Mulayam knows all too well that in the grassroots-level politics of Uttar Pradesh, it would be puerile to bank solely on image without the backing of money and muscle. Apparently Mulayam’s fondness for criminals could only be explained in the context of the ravines of Chambal, where power still flows through the barrel of gun. This is the reason that Mulayam appears averse to shun his friends who stood by him in troubled times.