View | RIP Mulayam Singh Yadav: All you need to know about Samajwadi Party strongman

Netaji, who was also a wrestler, got a chance for another kind of contest when he stood for assembly elections in 1967 and became the youngest member of the Uttar Pradesh assembly.

After Lohia's death in 1967, he went with Raj Narayan, whose socialist faction merged with the Bharatiya Kranti Dal of Charan Singh to form the Bharatiya Lok Dal.

In 1977, Yadav was elected on a Janata Party (JP) ticket and became minister of cooperatives, animal husbandry, and rural industries. He lost the 1980 elections but became president of the Uttar Pradesh Lok Dal. He sought OBC quotas, supported the cottage industry, and called for 60 percent of government expenditure to be devoted to agriculture, Jaffrelot notes.

In February 1987, Ajit Singh, son of Charan Singh, replaced Yadav as Leader of the Opposition in the Uttar Pradesh assembly. The Lok Dal split into Lok Dal (Ajit) and Lok Dal (Bahuguna), with Yadav becoming the de facto leader of the latter.

For the 1989 elections, Yadav joined the Janata Dal of VP Singh. When the party did very well in Uttar Pradesh, the MLAs chose Yadav instead of Ajit Singh as Uttar Pradesh's chief minister. He split the Janata Dal soon to form Samajwadi Janata Party, which became Samajwadi Party in 1992.

By this time, something had changed, leading to the terminal decline of the Congress in India's most populous state. The Ram temple Rath Yatra of LK Advani had made large sections of the 'upper castes' – 20 percent of Uttar Pradesh's population -- shift allegiance to the BJP. Since Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister failed to 'save' the Babri Masjid in 1992, and as Yadav as chief minister had once ordered police firing on the Kar Sevaks to save the mosque, Muslims of Uttar Pradesh shifted to the SP. The Congress lost two major social constituencies that were with it till 1989. With VP Singh’s announcement that Mandal Commission recommendations to give quotas to OBCs would be implemented, the polarization led to the rise of an OBC consciousness.

The rise of the middle castes in north India had begun in the 1960s, with the Jats of western Uttar Pradesh, the most influential backward caste of the state, at its core. However, Yadav brought a Yadav primacy to the OBC movement, something his split with Ajit Singh signified. Since the Congress had not given adequate representation to the OBCs in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the OBC rise was against the Congress.

Yadav primacy led to a solid Yadav-Muslim vote bank that constituted 26 percent of the state's population. This combination made the SP a strong party. However, the Yadav-centricism that Netaji had started eventually disempowered OBC-centric politics.

The level of Yadav dominance in the party under him was telling: Christophe Jaffrelot shows that there was 42.4 percent OBCs in the 1995 national executive of the party, and among these more than half (22 percent) were Yadav. The Scheduled Castes, which are 21 percent of the state’s population, constituted only 5 percent.

In his second government, 720 out of 900 teachers appointed were Yadav, and, purportedly, 1,223 of the 3,151 candidates selected for police recruitment were also Yadavs. Jaffrlelot shows that only 2 percent of the SP's national executive members in 1995, and just 8 percent of its MLAs, were Kurmi.

This sowed seeds of the decline. With the rise of Narendra Modi, the BJP began to focus heavily on non-Yadav OBCs, opening the doors of representation for them. It could do this without angering the ‘upper castes’, as it was the only party that did not need to offer any representation to Muslims.

Data for the 2017 UP assembly elections released by The Trivedi Centre for Political Data at Ashoka University is revealing. While Yadav representation in the assembly fell to 17 percent, the Kurmi representation rose from 11 to 28 percent.

The roots of the BJP’s UP surge lie in SP’s Yadav-centricism. The BJP has now transformed into the party of OBCs, apart from ‘upper castes’, and the SP remains just the party of Yadavs and Muslims.

Apart, Netaji’s politics was also perceived as replete with muscle power, not just by the middle classes but also by Dalits. The 2012 victory of SP was followed by news of attacks on Dalits. In 1995, the SP-BSP alliance of 1993 had come apart because SP men attacked Mayawati in a guest house in Lucknow, and she was saved only because of the intervention of Brahmadutt Dwivedi, who was then in the BJP.

Academic AK Verma argues that while Netaji talked about socialism, the lifestyles of SP leaders were visibly spectacular. Indeed, with Amar Singh, the party came in touch with corporates and also Bollywood celebrities, who would often be called to perform at the Saifai Mahotsav in Yadav’s village.

That apart, Netaji, with a typically west Uttar Pradesh slur in his speech and a thick accent, remained a son of the soil in his politics. He opposed women’s reservation in Parliament without an OBC quota. The bill is still hanging fire. His entertaining speech delivery would captivate journalists in Parliament, much like that of Lalu Prasad.

He remained a favourite with Muslims for delaying the rise of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, but he also formed an alliance with Kalyan Singh, in whose term as Uttar Pradesh chief minister the Babri mosque was demolished. In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, expectedly, Muslim votes shifted to Congress in large measure.

It is said that it was difficult to judge what was going on in the mind of Netaji, an astute politician. He could throw last-moment surprises. He backed the CPI (M) against the Indo-US nuclear deal, but did a volte-face at the last moment, leaving the left in the lurch. He threw his own son Akhilesh out of the SP in 2017, but many thought this was just for show, and he wanted to have Akhilesh rather than Shivpal Singh Yadav as his successor.

It is for Akhilesh Yadav to try and achieve the heights his father reached as a politician. However, the task is uphill. He is struggling against Yogi Adityanath, and old-time leaders of his party do not have the best reputation and may also try to scuttle him.