The original founding members like Azam Khan and Salim Sherwani are now out of the party.

It is yet unclear if Amar Singh, who has been convalescing after a surgery in Singapore, will be able to attend the 'introspection' meet. Dharmendra Yadav, party MP and nephew of Mulayam Singh, told IANS: 'It is not confirmed if he (Amar Singh) would be able to make it.'

'Now the party is closer to the hero of the Babri Masjid episode Kalyan Singh, (leaders of other parties) like Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan. It is a totally confused party being run like a private company with all important levers of control in the hands of family members.'

Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had been chief minister of the state three times, was thrown out of power in 2007 and his party managed to win only 97 seats - down from 148 in 2002 - in the 403-seat assembly.

He had a solid votebank of Muslims and earned the title of 'Mulla Mulayam' after he took on Hindu zealots trying to lay a siege on the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1990. The mosque was demolished in 1992 when the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Kalyan Singh was chief minister.

But the Samajwadi Party lost out majorly on the Muslim vote in the April-May elections by shaking hands with the same Kalyan Singh, who had quit the BJP.

According to a survey by the Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), as many as 60 percent of Muslim votes in Uttar Pradesh had gone to the Samajwadi Party in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, but the figure came down to 46 percent in the 2007 assembly polls and 30 percent in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

'Giving a clean chit to Kalyan Singh and shaking hands with a person who was chief minister at the time when the Babri Masjid was razed enraged Muslim voters and leaders and they voted for different parties, especially the Congress,' a Rajya Sabha MP of the Samajwadi Party told IANS.

Sudha Pai, professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said: 'Kalyan Singh is definitely a factor. However, along with this, anger among Muslim leaders like Azam Khan created problems for the party in parts of western Uttar Pradesh.'

(Brij Khandelwal and Khalid Akhter can be contacted at brij.k@ians.in and khalid.a@ians.in)