Do or die Mulayam!

This Yadav’s back is to the wall but he is not going down without a fight

Pradeep Kapoor Lucknow

Any wrestler in Mulayam Singh Yadav’s place would hate to hear this announcement from the referee: ‘On the left side is Mulayam Singh Yadav and on the right side is every one else including the central government, election commission, the CBI, governor, BJP, BSP, and the Congress.’

It is an uneven fight, but the pugnacious Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav is not giving it up. Engaged in the fiercest battle of his 40-year-old political career, where nearly all the political parties are arraigned against him, Yadav is doing what he does best —hitting the road and appealing to his Muslim and Yadav constituencies to stand by him. But that doesn’t seem to be working. Save for his Sancho Panza, Amar Singh, and Amitabh Bachchan, his old allies and friends have begun to desert him — creating an impression that he might get a severe hammering from the voters. His misery is compounded by the Supreme Court order to probe into his disproportionate assets.

Till the parliamentary elections in 2004, the Samajwadi Party (SP) was on a strong wicket. In the parliament elections he got 40 seats and a sway over more than the 143 seats and 25.4 per cent votes that he won in the 2002 assembly elections. Even then, Yadav had fought the elections on his own. But at that time he enjoyed enormous goodwill. The Congress and Rashtriya Lok Dal both gave their letters of support to the governor.

In the last few months, everyone has dumped his party forcing him to go it alone. Even Raj Babbar, who campaigned furiously to help the SP win the elections, left the party claiming that it had been hijacked by dalals (brokers). His agitation against the grant of farmland for a Reliance power project reinforced the impression that the party was ‘anti-

farmers’. Raj Babbar and his rag tag alliance, Janmorcha, which is led by

VP Singh, might hurt the SP in many constituencies.

Another leader that could hurt him is his old confidante, Beni Prasad Verma. A kurmi by caste, he was upset by the manner in which he was ignored by Yadav. He floated his own party, and his alliance with the BJP could harm the SP.

Yadav can endure the parting of ways with such people if he is assured of the support of the minorities, who comprise 18-20 per cent of the state’s population. Indications from the ground suggest that minorities, too, might not vote for his party with the kind of enthusiasm that they displayed last time. Called ‘Maulana Mulayam’ for firing at kar sevaks when they stormed the Babri Masjid, Yadav is now viewed with some suspicion as he is seen to have bailed out BJP leader, LK Advani, in the Babri Masjid demolition case.

Many senior Muslim leaders are parting ways with him. The list is long and it straddles central, western and eastern Uttar Pradesh where there are Muslims in big numbers.

Mulayam Singh is also banking on the muscle power that the thakurs can provide his party. From the standpoint of brawn, the yadav and thakur combine is very strong and traditionally known to control the voting of the dalits. Superior supervision by the election commission might dilute their use, but still, they are no pushovers. The symbol of the thakur support to Yadav is the feared MLA from Pratapgarh, Raghuraj Pratap Singh, who was jailed by Mayawati under POTA. The support of the thakurs had added five per cent voter support to his party in the last elections.

Yadav has been unmindful of Singh’s rough ways and has given space to many with criminal backgrounds. These gangster politicians are also vote contractors and manage to get support for the SP for money and protection. All the government contracts go to them and there is a view that the SP might leverage their backing to tide over the problems some of its erstwhile allies are creating.

In every which way one looks at it, Yadav is not throwing in the towel as yet; he is unlikely to go down without a fight. It is a do or die battle for him because he understands that his staying in power could give him some immunity from criminal prosecution, for all the assets he allegedly created during his three-year rule.

Ground shifts below Congress feet

The leaders are missing and prince Rahul’s charm is not working, as yet

The most debated question in Congress circles in Delhi is: How can the party be revived in UP again?

By the look of it, it is not happening anytime soon. Last month there was a remote possibility of the party playing an important role in deciding who would form the government in UP in the event of a hung house when it was engaged in putting together a fourth front against Mulayam Singh Yadav. But that chance also evaporated when the Congress chose to go alone. The fourth front was expecting to win 70-80 seats and hold the critical balance to ensure that no government could be formed, in a hung house, without its approval.

Although all kinds of reasons are given as to why the Congress did not align with the Janmorcha and other small parties, the truth is that there are Congress leaders who fear revival lest it hurts their political and financial interests. Many of them occupy important positions in the organisation and are on the payroll of the SP and the BSP. They give contrarian advice to the party leadership by suggesting that the Congress is a big party that should contest the elections on its own. The truth, however, is that the Congress is in shambles without any of its old constituencies backing it.

The rickety state of the Congress party was visible in good measure when Rahul Gandhi went on a road show to western UP recently. On the first day of his visit, the crowds were very thin. Later, when his show gathered momentum, there was evidence of sabotage in the way meetings were organised. In Muzaffarnagar, local leaders organised his meeting in a school where board examinations were to take place a few hours later. The district magistrate, who had cautioned them earlier, was forced to ban the meeting forcing Rahul to return Delhi without addressing a meeting. Now he will be wiser when he goes cruising to other parts of the state.

Some time back Rahul Gandhi had sent in some 100 volunteers to different parts of the state to mobilise support for the party. There is little evidence that it worked in boosting Congress’s chance. Instead he should have ramped the entire organisation before the elections.

In UP, the Congress is headed by Salman Khurshid who is criticised for being disconnected from the ground and surrounding himself with elitist leaders who do not mix with ordinary workers. Many office-bearers of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) have prospered in recent years even though the party has been out of power since 1989. Their proximity to the SP and BSP has made them richer overnight and they do not have the fire in their belly to fight to come back to power.

Most of the tickets are sold or given to people who have no support in their constituencies. The party is controlled by a few leaders like Pramod Tewari, who has been the legislature party leader for the last 15 years. There are others like Akhilesh Das, who exercise control over party affairs in Lucknow to the chagrin of others. His candidate for the mayor’s post, Manzur Ahmed, lost as there was no support to him from the UPCC.

There are many other Congress leaders who have open linkages with all the political parties in the state. Take for instance Ammar Rizvi, a good speaker and leader of the Shia community. He was on the threshold of joining the BJP during the last parliament elections but developed cold feet at the last moment. The Congress party had initiated disciplinary proceedings against him but for some reason they were not taken to a logical conclusion. Rizvi has managed to get a ticket for his son from the BSP. There are scores of others, like him, who have their sons, daughters and daughter-in-laws fighting elections under the rubric of other parties.

The truth is that the Congress party has lost its direction and support in UP’s caste-ridden society. It just does not know how to revive its fortunes after charisma of the Nehru-Gandhi stopped delivering.