Congress crisis managers, desperately looking for allies in the face of the Left’s threat to withdraw support if the UPA goes ahead with the nuclear deal, may find some temporary comfort. Although Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has said that any decision on the deal will be taken after a UNPA meeting on July 3, at a function to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Emergency here today, he, significantly, made not one critical mention of the Congress.Speaking at the National Conference of Political Prisoners, organized to mark the anniversary of the imposition of Emergency by the Congress, Mulayam did not once mention either “Congress” or “Indira Gandhi.”Instead, he used the opportunity to attack the Mayawati-led BSP government in Uttar Pradesh alleging that the administrative repression in that regime was worse than atrocities during the Emergency. This comes days after the BSP announced withdrawal of support to the UPA. Mulayam’s party colleague and Rajya Sabha MP Janeshwar Mishra went a step further. Arguing that “socialists of the Emergency” have had to take Congress support to keep communal forces at bay, he told the audience that they should “not be nervous” if “we (socialists) will have to do it so again in the future for the sake of pragmatic politics.(Ab toh samay aa gaya hai vyavharik rajniti ka. Agar aise vyavharik rajniti ki paristhitiyan banti hain toh aap sab ghabda mat jaana).” “I remember the days of Emergency but I would like to point that the current administrative repression in UP,” said Mulayam. “Today, at several small places, I notice that police reports (cases) have been registered to the tune of two thousand to three thousand. My guess is that there will be about 1 lakh people in jails due to these false police cases, there will be about thousands of false cases implicating several people in one case, even the entire village in some cases. If you want to see atrocities in the country, you should go to UP.”Without mentioning the Congress or the UPA, Mulayam said: “Today’s youth is depressed. The country is still reeling under price rise, unemployment and corruption. We (the political prisoners of emergency) must stand unitedly to come out of this situation.”His silence was in sharp contrast to remarks made by JD (U) leader Sharad Yadav, who also shared the dais with Mulayam, who did not hesitate to slam the Congress for the Emergency.What the SP, with its 39 MPs, does is critical for the UPA if the Left withdraws and decides to vote against the Government going to Vienna to confirm the India-specific safeguards agreement.
