Killing Mulayam softly

The Jan Morcha alliance and the VP Singh factor can turn the murky chess game of electoral politics upside down in UP. And Mulayam Singh Yadav is not smiling
Pradeep Kapoor Lucknow
         
There is no doubt that the Jan Morcha (JM) alliance led by former prime minister VP Singh will play a major role in the installation of the next government in UP after the forthcoming assembly elections. The extent to which the Samajwadi Party (SP) and its supremo chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav are terribly jittery with the emergence of the JM alliance on the political scene is evident from the organised onslaught against VP Singh by sundry SP leaders. The recent attack by the SP cadre on VP Singh’s son Ajay Kumar’s multiplex in Allahabad is part of the visible frustration stalking the ruling party in Lucknow. And ironically, with his rallies drawing big support and the Dadri issue boomeranging on the SP, the direct political attack has only brought the smile back on the ailing Raja of Manda’s face.

The big irony is that Mulayam Singh and his loyalists are no longer criticising arch rival Mayawati or the BJP, but are concentrating
on taking on VP Singh and his JM alliance. So much so, senior SP leader Beni Parsad Verma branded VP Singh as a ‘senile old man’. There was also a critical mention in the SP’s state executive meet when some leaders said that he has been resurrected from a ‘rajnitik kuredaan’ (dustbin of politics). In fact, there has been a chorus of accusatory howls emerging from a panicky SP camp accusing VP Singh of all the ills plaguing the state and that he ignored the interests of the backward castes and Muslims when he was the prime minister. They also accuse him of being an agent of the Congress.

With the emergence of the JM, the SP is aware of a potential threat to its traditional vote bank of backwards and Muslims which helped Mulayam Singh become chief minister for the third time. VP Singh is widely considered as the messiah of backward castes and classes for his government's decision to implement the Mandal Commission report. He also has a committed Muslim support-base for his unflinching position against the BJP’s communal politics and people still remember that it was the BJP which withdrew its outside support to his government in Delhi. Mulayam Singh is aware that VP Singh commands respect among the Muslims for his role in the Babri Masjid and for blocking LK Advani’s violent rath yatra by getting him arrested by Laloo Prasad in Bihar.

Political observers believe that the reason behind the success of VP Singh
is his good public image, political and social work among backwards, Muslims and slum-dwellers, and recent inroads among farmers across the hinterland. People are fed up with Mulayam Singh for blatantly promoting his own caste and family members and giving a free hand to criminal elements who often openly flout the law. Besides Amar Singh’s reputation and conduct, his tapes’ scandal and his open proximity to some industrialists, has not exactly helped the SP’s political image of being a ‘socialist’ party. In that sense, Raj Babbar’s slogan, that it’s time to liberate UP from the clutches of fixers and middlemen, has actually clicked in the popular imagination.