Lucknow, March 7: Akhilesh Yadav has promised his father Mulayam Singh Yadav he would return "everything" to him in three months, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister's stepmother Sadhana Gupta has said, opening up on the feud within the ruling family ahead of the final round of polling.

"Let us see what he does. But Netaji is Netaji. He will remain a leader even if he (Akhilesh) doesn't return everything," she was quoted as saying to a section of the media in Etawah, Mulayam's home district, yesterday.

The comments came two months after Akhilesh had taken over the reins of the Samajwadi Party, replacing his father as its chief at a party convention on January 1.

"Akhilesh ne kaha hai teen mahine mein sab kuchh lauta dega (Akhilesh has promised he would return everything in three months)," Sadhana was quoted as saying.

It was the first time Sadhana had made such a categorical statement since Akhilesh prevailed in the family feud that broke out into the open late last year.

Sadhana did not specify what she meant by "everything" but it's possible she was referring to the post of party national chief.

Earlier, in September, Mulayam had removed Akhilesh as Samajwadi state chief and handed the post to his younger brother, Shivpal Yadav. The chief minister, in retaliation, had sacked Shivpal from his cabinet. He took Shivpal back after a few days and later sacked him again.

On January 1, Akhilesh replaced his father as Samajwadi national president after a show of hands.

Sadhana said whatever happened on January 1 was unfortunate. "We didn't sleep for many days and couldn't understand what was happening. Thereafter, we left things to God and time," she said, adding that from now on she wouldn't work from behind the curtain.

"I will come forward and work without any post or salary. I want Akhilesh to win and become chief minister again," she said.

Asked about the future of her son, Prateek Yadav, she said: "He will observe things and decide.... But we will never tolerate (any) insult to Netaji. He founded the party and took it to its present position."

Shivpal, she added, shouldn't have been insulted. "He has done a lot for Netaji and the party.... He deserves a position in the party."

Sadhana had met Mulayam for the first time in 1989 and the Samajwadi patriarch had, in an affidavit in the Supreme Court in 2007, accepted she was his wife. That was four years after the death of Akhilesh's mother, Malti Devi.

Some party insiders believe Sadhana has been trying to establish her son and daughter-in-law Aparna in politics. Aparna is the party's candidate from Lucknow Cantonment in this election.

Sadhana kept returning to the "insult" Mulayam had faced. "Netaji shouldn't have been insulted," she repeated, "otherwise, everything was fine. But he shouldn't have been insulted. Nobody should have done this. He (Mulayam) had faced tremendous hardship in building the party."

Sadhana said she wanted everybody (in the family) to be together. "I wanted all of us to sit together at festivals and talk. The incident of January 1 would not have happened had they done this."

She denied any role in the family feud and said she wanted everything to be all right between father and son. "He (Akhilesh) may be misguided. He cares for his father and me. He often tells me to avoid having sugar," she said.

"We don't know what happened," she added. "Everything was fine. He danced at Prateek's wedding and took Aparna's friend to see the Taj Mahal. I had never imagined that such things would happen."

Prateek and Aparna had got married in December 2011.