Last month, Shivpal Yadav had again said he was ready for a "merger" With Samajwadi Party.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, who is emerging as the big challenger to the BJP ahead of the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, has agreed to mend fences with his estranged uncle Shivpal Yadav. After a 45-minute meeting between the two in Lucknow, Akhilesh Yadav tweeted a picture of him and Shivpal Yadav, saying they had agreed to an alliance for the crucial 2022 assembly election.
Shivpal Yadav, 66, had broken away from the Samajwadi Party ahead of the 2017 elections and formed his own party -- the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) after very public differences with Akhilesh Yadav.
In the last year, Shivpal Yadav had said openly multiple times that he was ready for a rapprochement. But there had been no reciprocation from his nephew except for a few non-committal statements
"There was a meeting with the National President of PSPL and the matter of alliance was decided. The policy of taking regional parties along is continuously strengthening the SP and leading the SP and other allies to a historic victory," Akhilesh Yadav tweeted in Hindi after the meeting.
The SP leader, whose rallies have been drawing increasingly bigger crowds, has been interested in bringing as many smaller parties on board as possible.
Already, he has formed tie-ups with Janwadi Party (Socialist), Om Prakash Rajbhar's SBSP, Keshav Dev Maurya's Mahan Dal, the Apna Dal faction led by Krishna Patel and Jayant Chowdhury's Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Shivpal Yadav's party has sizeable influence on just a few seats in the Etawah region, but as a wily political veteran who was among the founders of the Samajwadi Party, his inputs are likely to help Akhilesh Yadav immensely in the tough battle ahead for the state.
Samajwadi Party sources say the patch up will also send a message of unity to its core voter base.
Once the trusted younger brother of Mulayam Yadav and his de-facto second-in-command, Shivpal Yadav had clashed with his nephew ahead of the 2017 elections over leadership of the party.
After a messy tussle through January and February 2017, in which Mulayam Singh Yadav had sided with his brother, Akhilesh Yadav – who was also the Chief Minister at the time -- had firmly established his grip on the party.
Shivpal Yadav, who broke away, formed his own party, but lost the battle for the party's most valued possession, the cycle poll symbol.
The Great Divide within the first family was seen as another cause for the voters' rejection of the Samajwadi Party, which had a tie-up with the Congress for the election.