Mulayam’s dilemma

Mulayam’s arrogance and political bargaining power came from his ability to win votes in UP and the strength of his vote bank. He already had the Yadav and backward votes, and the gradual shift of the Muslim votes — away from the Congress to the party Mulayam headed, now the Samajwadi Party — made him a national player, harbouring even bigger ambitions.

The SP’s rise was parallel to the fall of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh. The party which ruled most ofIndia’s independent life and catapulted leaders from the UP to the most sought-after job in the country saw its ranks depleted: it lost the upper castes to the BJP, the backward castes and Muslims to the SP and the dalits to the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Like BSP’s Kashi Ram who is always confident of his dalit vote bank, Mulayam showed an arrogant belief in his Muslim votes. Election after election, he got enough signals that he was right. The Muslims did not have an alternative in UP.

But one by-election seems to have changed things overnight. The party everyone had written off in UP, the Congress, showed it’s back in the business of getting votes in the Agra assembly by-election, where it performed well and Mulayam’s party badly.

Samajwadi Party bosses told their partymen and press that there was nothing to worry and that the result did not show any paradigm shift in UP politics.

Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh says: “The question of erosion of minority votes is a baseless propaganda unleashed bythe Congress. The recently held elections, they are tom-toming the Agra by-election results. As a matter of fact, the Third Front has always bagged third postion there.”Mulayam also does not buy the argument that the votes have begun to shift. “When the minorities vote the Congress, they do it under grave compulsion.

They voted for the Congress in Rajasthan and Delhi out of fear for the BJP and they voted for the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha out of love and respect. This basic difference will have to be recognised,” adds Mulayam.

Their speeches, however, prove that things are not quite so. Mulayam, who has been urging Congress president Sonia Gandhi to take over the leadership of the country, with his party’s support, suddenly turned around to say that her party is the enemy number one and not the BJP. That was not a slip, statements of the same tone and message were repeated at regular intervals.

Why is the Samajwadi Party suddenly sending out panic signals? Having already burnt bridges with itsnatural ally, the BSP, the SP will find it tough to reposition itself in UP politics if Muslim votes shift to the Congress en bloc. Though the shift in Muslim votes may not be the end of the story for the SP, it certainly means a scaling down of its political ambitions.

Says Mulayam: “We are not scheming as far as the minorities are concerned. Their welfare is our prime interest. We are not using the minorities as a strategy like the Congress. Congress uses the miniorities while we are committed to them,” says Mulayam.

But the question here is more immediate. How can the SP appear friendly with a party which is poaching its own vote banks in the state that matters most? If Mulaya continues to tell his shaky vote bank that the enemy number one is BJP, they can very well think of voting for a national party which has the potential to defeat the BJP — read the Congress.

“The SP and RLM thought that the Congress is a lesser evil as compared to the BJP. But in the recent past, whether it is the PatentBill, Insurance Bill or the division of states, on all major issues, the BJP and Congress are one,” sats Mulayam.

Mulayam’s is a hard choice. His secular rhetoric suffers when he says the BJP is not the prime enemy. His vote bank may suffer when he says the Congress is better than the BJP. So in the run-up to the next election, the Samajwadi Party has to walk the razor’s edge — between the two. From all indications, it is a tough and dangerous task.