Putting up a front

There is certainly quite a bit of unease about the Congress in the SP ever since the elections. Which explains why the SP, which had a cosy relationship with the Congress, suddenly went on an overdrive to attack the Congress. Much as its leaders would assert to the contrary, it is difficult to believe that its tirade against the Congress does not have anything to do with the election results.

As it is, the SP was not in the least comfortable about the continued run of the A.B. Vajpayee Government, which it thinks is courtesy the Congress. The SP8217;s desperate appeals to the Congress to take the lead in bringing the Government down should be seen in the context of the fact that its bouncing back into the limelight is inextricably linked to the short-circuiting of the Vajpayee dispensation. The Congress was not willing to play ball though, choosing to bide its time and to first consolidate itself in the states. The SP8217;s relationship with the Congress suddenly turned sour.And no sooner than it did, Mulayam and his partymen began Congress-bashing. The vibes between the two have since been anything but good. The latest evidence was that each gave the other a royal ignore in the iftaar diplomacy.

On their part, SP leaders assert that the election results and their anti-Congress stance should not be linked to each other. They maintain that they started attacking the Congress soon after its Pachmarhi conclave where their party was dubbed casteist.

8220;How can you call us casteist when we are giving a voice to the Backwards and Muslims who have been deprived of justice?8221; asks SP spokesperson Amar Singh. Party supremo Mulayam contends: 8220;It is only the Left and the RLM which are fighting communalism.8221; He also accuses the Congress of colluding with the BJP on every important issue facing the nation today.

The SP is also livid at the 8220;tom-tomming8221; by the Congress over its poor performance in the Agra Assembly election held along with the recent Assembly polls in fourstates. 8220;A lot of disinformation is being spread by the Congress about our performance in the Agra Assembly election. Agra has never been a traditional stronghold of the SP,8221; argues Amar Singh.

Here, the BJP won the seat defeating the Congress by a narrow margin while the SP came way behind and lost its deposit. 8220;But too much should not be read into our defeat here. Even at our peak, when we had an alliance with the BSP, in 1993, we could poll only 15,708 votes and in 1991 and 1996 we didn8217;t even put up our own candidate, supporting once the SJP Samajwadi Janata Party and the second time the CongressT,8221; Singh says.

8220;If Agra can be the yardstick for the Congress to say that it has weaned away Muslims from our fold, then we too can cite the poor response of Muslims to Sonia Gandhi8217;s iftaar party. While her party was full of diplomats and elite Muslims, our party, organised at a short notice, was well attended by important imams of Uttar Pradesh,8221; is his argument.

Despite all the negativepublicity about the SP8217;s perceived yielding of ground to the Congress, its leaders are putting up a show of bravado.

8220;Which communities are with the Congress in UP? With a vote percentage of a mere 2 per cent, how far can they go? At best they may win five Lok Sabha seats. The Backwards are with the SP and the upper castes with the BJP. And the minorities cannot be fooled into backing the Congress when it is clear it is that party which has been responsible for the installation and continuance of a BJP Government at the Centre,8221; they say.

The SP8217;s gameplan now appears to be to 8220;expose8221; the Congress and project it as another face of the BJP. The 8220;nexus8221; between the Congress and the BJP in Parliament when they voted together on important Bills like those regarding the Insurance Regulatory Authority, women8217;s reservation, patents and election of the deputy speaker is becoming the talking point of its anti-Congress tirade. And the latest stand of the Congress on Hinduism, which has been welcomed by theBJP, has been seized by the SP with relish to drive home to the Muslims the point that there is little to distinguish between the two.

While it remains to be seen how Muslims will actually react to the moves of both the Congress and the SP, what should be worrying for the latter as well as its ally, the RJD of Laloo, is the bleak prospects of a third force emerging in the near future. As if to throw cold water on Mulayam and Laloo8217;s efforts to forge a new front of non-BJP, non-Congress parties came former prime minister V.P. Singh8217;s thesis that a third alternative would have to wait till the Congress has had a stint in power.

The Left parties are strong allies but then they too have been displaying some hesitation in going the whole hog with the SP. This of course has to do more with Laloo than Mulayam himself. Mulayam8217;s insistence on Laloo being a part of any new formation of these parties has not been received well not only by the Left but also by a section of the Janata Dal.