Mulayam-Akhilesh Yadav feud not new, Indian politics abounds with such ‘Game of Thrones’ cases

With the Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav today slamming the supporters of his son Akhilesh Yadav, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, it seems the daggers are out between father and son.

In a bid to save the party from splitting just six months away from the state elections, Mulayam Singh Yadav reportedly asked his son’s supporters if they knew how the founders had fought to bring the party to this level. The anti-Akhilesh camp led by Mulayam and his brother Shivpal Yadav have alleged that Akhilesh is intending to break away and form a new party.

The Indian political landscape has witnessed a number of father-son feuds that can perhaps give The Game of Thrones a run for its money. Here’s a quick look at the other family battles.

• Who can forget the most famous family fallouts of all – the Gandhi family feud? Late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was reported to be closer to her younger son, Sanjay Gandhi, but did not approve of the daughter-in-law Maneka Gandhi, who is now the Union Cabinet Minister for Women & Child Development in the Modi government. After Sanjay Gandhi was killed in a plane crash, the leadership mantle fell on the older brother Rajiv Gandhi. Today, even though the two grandsons, Rahul Gandhi and Varun Gandhi, belong to different political parties, the divide between the two families is much deeper.
• Son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu overthrew father-in-law NT Rama Rao in a coup in 1995. He engineered an internal party (Telugu Desam Party) coup against him claiming that NTR was planning to hand over the leadership of the party to his second wife Lakshmi Parvathi. Some of the top TDP MLAs sided with Naidu and so did NTR’s sons and another son-in-law. However, they fell out with Naidu soon after. Reportedly, NTR called the coup a “planned treachery”comparing Chandrababu to Aurangzeb.
• The DMK chief M Karunanidhi has always kept a tight leash on his large family. He has in the past quelled uprising from his older son Azhagiri, whom he expelled from the party. His younger son Stalin and daughter Kanimozhi both active in Tamil Nadu state politics know all too well to go against his wishes.
• The former Chief Minister of Karnataka, Late S Bangarappa, described as a party hopper for his propensity to jump parties from the Congress to the BJP to Janata Dal (Secular), had a fallout with his son Kumar Bangarappa. The father reportedly would publicly denounce his older son giving preference to his younger son Madhu Bangarappa to get a BJP election ticket from his old constituency Soraba. The two brothers stood for Lok Sabha elections – one from the Congress and another BJP – from Soraba, with Kumar Bangarappa defeating Madhu.