A house divided

WHILE the Allahabad High Court dropped two of the cases—one under the Prevention of Corruption Act and another under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the CB-CID is presiding over the third. All the accused are out on bail.

Since no big name figures in the last remaining case, it’s not a priority with anyone any more. Even the CB-CID officials refer to it as ‘‘a body without soul’’.

Nine years ago the storm over the issue was strong. On June 2, 1995, Mayawati had reached Lucknow with a letter from Kanshi Ram, withdrawing support from Mulayam’s government and staking the BSP’s claim to form government.

After handing over the letter to the governor, Mayawati held a meeting of party MLAs at the state guest house, preparing them for a prospective alliance government. Once through with the meeting at 3 pm, Mayawati invited a few confidants, including Barkhu Ram Verma and R K Chowdhary, to her room for a discussion.

It was at this point that a mob of SP MLAs barged into the guest house, attacking BSP MLAs. In the violence that followed, many were seriously injured.

The mob disconnected electricity and telephone wires. ‘‘We were left with just one telephone—the SP MLAs didn’t know of this. This helped us keep in touch with the outside world,’’ remembers Verma.

The attackers could not reach Mayawati. Meanwhile, BJP MLA Brahma Dutt Dwivedi, who’d come to meet Mayawati, says he saw the mob approaching her room with gas cylinders. ‘‘They wanted to put the room on fire,’’ says Dwivedi.

THE incident caused a deep rift between the Samajwadi Party and the BSP. It remains an unforgettable case in UP politics, one that’s nipped any possible alliance between the state’s two biggest parties.

At the party level, their animosty is here to stay but at another level the incident also shows that there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics. Those who supported Mayawati then have since become arch rivals. And those who attacked her are now being counted among her loyals.

Chowdhary and Verma, Mayawati’s staunch supporters rebelled against her during the last assembly elections and formed their own party. Verma then returned to the BSP but Chowdhary still sees himeslf as Mayawati’s greatest opponent. To balance these exits, two SP MLAs Rama Kant Yadav and Uma Kant, whose names figured in the FIR have now joined the BSP.