Fresh power play by Akhilesh, Shivpal on ticket selection

Lucknow : The contentious issue of ticket distribution on Monday again exposed the rift in Samajwadi Party with state party chief Shivpal Yadav attacking Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav over his reported parallel list of candidates.
The choice of candidates for 175 seats by Shivpal has apparently not gone down well with his defiant nephew Akhilesh who, according to party insiders, is understood to have prepared his own list of preferred candidates for all 403 UP Assembly seats and sent it to his father and party supremo Mulayam  Singh Yadav.
This is Akhilesh’s second power play in the past three days. On December 24, Akhilesh had met first-time MLAs at his residence and promised to give them party tickets. Chinks in the ruling party’s armour once again came to the fore when Shivpal sent out a series of tweets virtually suggesting that he was the boss when it came to distributing tickets for the assembly elections due in a few months. Shivpal said the names of 175 candidates were already finalised and warned that any indiscipline would not be tolerated as it might harm the party’s image. He asserted that distribution of party tickets was done on the basis of winnability. “Tickets will be distributed based on wins. So far 175 people have been given tickets. The Chief Minister will be selected by the legislature party which is according to the party’s constitution. No indiscipline will be tolerated in the party,” he tweeted in Hindi.