Lucknow, Powerful cabinet minister Shivpal Yadav stripped by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav of all important portfolios late on Tuesday evening and handed him the social welfare department.

It was the move that puts him in direct confrontation with his father and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav months before assembly elections in the state.

According to sources, “Akhilesh Yadav has had many differences with Shivpal Yadav in recent months, especially over the merger the latter had planned of gangster Mukhtar Ansari's party with the Samajwadi Party.”

Mulayam Singh signalled by appointing him the party’s State president that Shivpal would construct the Samajwadi Party's plan for its bid to be voted back to power in the crucial elections to be held early next year.