Samajwadi Party supremo and three-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav passed away. He was 82.

President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were among a host of leaders who condoled the death of the veteran leader. As a mark of respect to the SP patriarch, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced a three-day state mourning.

Yadav served as Union defence minister from 1996 to 1998, and chief minister thrice in 1989-91, 1993-95, and 2003-07. 

The SP supremo was elected an MLA 10 times and an MP, mostly from Mainpuri and Azamgarh, seven times. 

Popularly known as Netaji

• Mulayam Singh was born on November 22, 1939 into a farming family in Saifai near Etawah in Uttar Pradesh.

• As a teenager, Yadav was influenced by socialist leader Lohia.

• Yadav, who took part in student union agitations and briefly taught at a college after getting a Political Science degree, first became an MLA in 1967.

• During his second term as MLA from the same constituency, Indira Gandhi declared Emergency and Yadav was sent to jail, like many opposition leaders.

• Back in the ring after the 1975-77 Emergency, Yadav became the state president of the Lok Dal. When the party split, he headed one faction of the state unit.

• Yadav was leader of Opposition in the UP Legislative Council and then in the state assembly, before becoming the chief minister in 1989 with the BJP extending outside support to his Janata Dal government.

• When the saffron party withdrew support over the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi issue in 1990, the Congress kept his government afloat for some months.

• A socialist, Yadav was open to possibilities in politics. Thanks often to mergers and splits, he had been affiliated with a series of parties — Lohia’s Sanyukt Socialist Party, Charan Singh's Bharatiya Kranti Dal, Bharatiya Lok Dal and Samajwadi Janata Party. He founded his own SP in 1992.

• Yadav struck deals with the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress whenever needed to form or save the governments led by him in Uttar Pradesh.

• In November 1993, Yadav headed a government in Uttar Pradesh, supported by the BSP. It collapsed when the ally pulled the rug.

• The SP leader then moved to the national stage, being elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996 from Mainpuri.

• He became the defence minister in the United Front government headed by H.D. Deve Gowda and the Sukhoi fighter jet deal with Russia was finalised during his term. Years later, he would be part of short-lived coalition of Janata Parivar parties that hoped to fight the 2015 Assembly elections in Bihar together.

• In 2003, Yadav became Uttar Pradesh chief minister for the third time after the collapse of a short-lived BSP-BJP coalition government.

• In 2012, the SP was again in a position to form the Uttar Pradesh government. But the senior Yadav stepped aside so that his son Akhilesh could become the state’s youngest CM at 38.

• In January 2017, his fortune began to turn. His elder son Akhilesh unseated him as party president in a surprise move.

• For party workers, even when he was no longer the SP president, the patriarch remained Netaji, the leader. 

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