LUCKNOW: At the height of the Yadav family feud earlier this year, Akhilesh Yadav made a rash promise to his father, Mulayam Singh Yadav saying he needed just 3 months as the party’s national president.A humiliating election defeat later, as the feud bubbles over to the glee of rival parties. The all-pervasive question in Lucknow is: Will the son now fulfil the promise?Mulayam, who was removed from the national president post by Akhilesh in January, castigated his son on Sunday, saying he regretted making him the CM in 2012.Akhilesh’s uncle Shivpal Yadav has demanded he honours his promise and step down as party’s national president or face a new SP front. ET spoke to a number of SP and BJP leaders in the state on the festering dispute in SP, though only some who spoke on record. Clearly, Akhilesh Yadav has dug his heels and is in no mood to quit.“Read the party’s constitution,” he said cryptically in Lucknow last month when asked if he would step down. The SP constitution says the national party president is elected by the National Sammelan, the group of MPs and MLAs, currently dominated by Akhilesh supporters. Akhilesh blamed the media for “endlessly” running the family dispute on TV, though he admitted it was one of the causes for the SP’s poor showing.“The longer he stays on as SP president, more he exposes his immaturity. He is like a version of Rahul Gandhi in UP while CM Adityanath has taken inspiration from Narendra Modi’s style and hit the ground running. SP has no chance of revival in the municipal polls or 2019 elections,” a senior BJP leader told ET, speaking on condition of anonymity.“The national president (Akhilesh) has already spoken on this…yeh koi sawaal-jawaab ka issue nahi hai (this is not an issue requiring a question or an answer). It is a technical matter,” the party’s senior spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary told ET.He added this was “an old issue and a personal matter.” Naresh Uttam , the state party president who replaced Shivpal, said he did not wish to comment. “It is Shivpal Yadavji who has raised this question…let him answer it too,” Uttam told ET. Sources close to Shivpal claim Akhilesh is on self-destruct mode, suggesting the BJP’s glee is not misplaced in the festering feud benefiting the ruling party.“Someone needs to take responsibility for the big loss in the elections which was fought under Akhilesh’s leadership. It was his decision to go with the Congress – that boomeranged. How will the party revive with this mind-set?” the source said. Uttam ducked the issues when asked. “We are presently on a mass membership drive under the leadership of Akhilesh Yadav. We are taking SP to the grass-root level,” said Uttam. But can Akhilesh alone accomplish this job?“Absolutely,” he says. Rajendra Chaudhary says the membership drive that kicked off on April 15 has already seen the party’s primary membership swell by 50 lakh new. The recent decision of the Congress to go alone in the municipal polls is also being seen in political circles as a failure of the SP-Congress alliance. SP supremo Mulayam Singh has squarely blamed the alliance.“Here a non-entity like Congress is announcing it will not contest municipal polls with us,” says a source close to Shivpal. Chaudhary, however, says the alliance is very much on. “It is not necessary that the alliance will exist in every poll – it was there in assembly polls, it may be in the 2019 elections. If alliance was broken, there would have been a proper announcement,” Chaudhary told ET.Watching from the sidelines, BJP is lapping up the dispute ahead of the 2019 battle. “First and foremost, Akhilesh has to admit his defeat. He has to get over his misconception that he did a lot of development but people got misled and voted for BJP. He has to resign to the fact that law and order was bad under SP government and hence people voted for us. Be it Akhilesh or Mulayam, they cannot give up their caste-communal politics and that will relegate SP to the pages of history,” BJP’s state spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi told ET.