THE UP FAL OUT

On that day, say highly placed Congress sources, she called Digvijay Singh, AICC General Secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh, and state unit president Rita Bahuguna Joshi to her residence, asking them what they felt about the Congress tying up with the SP. She told them that this was necessary in the face of the Left8217;s intransigence on the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Bahujan Samaj Party BSP had already withdrawn support from the UPA Government.

A week earlier, on June 18, when the PM decided to postpone the ninth meeting of the UPA-Left mechanism on the deal, scheduled for June 25, he had called up the Congress President to explain why the Government was compelled to defy the Left and go to the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA to confirm the India-specific safeguards agreement.

On the eve of that meeting, therefore, Sonia was already bracing up for the inevitable break with the Left. Digvijay Singh and Joshi backed their president8217;s plan. While Digvijay Singh flew to Mali the next day to attend a conference, Joshi went to Lucknow to elicit the views of state Congress leaders; she reported back to the high command in the affirmative a few days later.

Events unfolded quickly thereafter. Amar Singh called on External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the National Security Advisor briefed SP leaders, the SP approached former President APJ Abdul Kalam to seek his already-known views on the deal and finally, tea and snacks at 10 Janpath, four years after Amar Singh had left in a huff swearing revenge for being 8220;humiliated8221; by host Sonia at a dinner ahead of the formation of the UPA Government.

The reunion
On July 4, Amar Singh walked with SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav into the sequestered residence of Sonia at 10 Janpath and offered apologies for whatever had happened in the past8212;Amar Singh8217;s personal attack on Sonia being the most vitriolic. According to sources privy to the conversation that evening, Amar Singh emphasised that mistakes had been made by both sides, with Congress leaders spreading false stories about him, making CDs and even getting his telephones tapped.

Speaking to the Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV8217;s Walk The Talk programme, Singh credited Manmohan Singh for the Congress-SP rapprochement. Later he said, 8220;Only the PM, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi knew about it. Nobody else was involved.8221;

The SP general secretary said there has been 8220;constant goodwill8221; between him and the PM for over 10 years. Even after the UPA dinner fiasco, the PM had telephoned him to invite him to his swearing-in.

8220;The Prime Minister always asked me to support the deal but I would say your political leadership has to take the initiative. The actual thing started when Rahul Gandhi spoke to me after the death of my father in February. What further strengthened our change in position was the certification by former President Abdul Kalam that the deal was in national interest,8221; Amar Singh said.

Explaining the context in which Rahul had taken the initiative to call up Amar Singh, Congress sources said the party had realised the 8220;sheer impossibility8221; of any long-term relations with the BSP. 8220;Mayawati had prime ministerial ambitions and to achieve that she was looking to dig into our vote bank, especially the Dalits, across the country. The SP, on the other hand, had its ambitions limited to UP. While the Congress and the SP could share the secular votes in UP, our party could gain from this alliance outside the state,8221; said a senior Congress leader involved in UP affairs.

But four years ago things couldn8217;t have been more different.

In May 2004, CPIM general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet took an uninvited Amar Singh to a UPA dinner hosted by Sonia. Cold shouldered at the event, the Samajwadi Party became a dueller in a spectacular political feud.

The chill between the parties became tangibly frosty when the Centre loudly mulled the imposition of President8217;s rule in SP-ruled Uttar Pradesh just before the assembly polls last year. On February 14, the Supreme Court had disqualified with retrospective effect 13 BSP MLAs who had defected to help Mulayam form the government in 2003. In the melee that followed, the SP angrily withdrew its outside support to the UPA.

The SP then cosied up to the Left over the nuclear deal and more generally against the US; most memorably, at a joint public rally with the Left parties on November 13, 2005 in Lucknow, the SP criticised the Government for allegedly jettisoning India8217;s non-aligned stand on Iran under US pressure.

The Mayawati factor
But there were two political factors that were at work to close the gap between the SP and the Congress between 2004 and 2008. Looking back, the Left pullout over the nuclear deal may have only been the occasion to formalise the friendliness.

First, the Congress was becoming increasingly wary of its Left allies even as cracks in the SP-Left bonhomie started showing. Secondly, the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections saw Mayawati routing the SP in May 2007 and following it up by playing spoiler for the Congress in the subsequent Himachal and Gujarat assembly polls. In Gujarat, the margin of defeat of the Congress was smaller than the number of votes polled by the BSP in as many as 11 seats. In Himachal Pradesh, the number of such seats was 10.

Digvijay Singh admitted that the withdrawal of Left support and the events that followed it did not take the Congress entirely by surprise. 8220;Every political analyst had a sense that the Left would pull out at some point8230;We had an inkling.8221;

And the Congress was prepared for this eventuality. 8220;When coalition governments are run, one has to be in touch with all possible allies to meet political contingencies as they arise,8221; he said, but said he had no idea about the negotiations. 8220;If they were done, they were done at the highest levels8221;.

Mohan Singh, Lok Sabha MP and senior leader of the Samajwadi Party, was more forthright. 8220;The Left had to withdraw support before Lok Sabha elections, as they have a direct fight with the Congress in their strongholds. The Left is only putting a philosophical and ideological gloss on it. The Congress knew it was on borrowed time.8221; As for the SP drawing closer to the Congress, he said, the circumstance forced it. 8220;After Mayawati came to power, cases are being filed against our workers,8221; he said. 8220;They are being sent to jail. There is no rule of law in UP. So how do we fight back? We must gather all forces against her.8221;

The UP assembly polls was a moment of truth for the SP. While the party had increased its vote share fractionally 8212;from 25.4 per cent in the previous election to 25.5 per cent even as its seat tally dipped from 143 to 978212; its apparent 8216;retaining8217; of the vote share could not have reassured the party.

A closer look at the results showed evidence of a lot of churn. Of those who voted for the SP in the last assembly elections, about one-third shifted loyalties, more than in the case of the BSP voters. The SP could retain only 44 of the 143 seats it had won earlier. According to data from the Indian Express- CNN-IBN -CSDS post poll survey 2007 and a similar post-poll survey conducted by the CSDS in 2002, the Yadav voters did support the SP as much as last time, but evidence pointed at an erosion of Muslim vote for SP by about 7 percent 8212; from 54 per cent to 47. The SP lost about 2 percentage point votes and seven seats in the constituencies with high concentration of Muslim population.

The numbers could not have been more sobering for the SP. May 2007 signalled that Mulayam8217;s core Muslim vote might not hold strong, especially if the Muslim voters did not fear the return of the BJP, that the party could be open to poaching in the coming Lok Sabha polls, and that did not have strong auxiliary support from any other section of society. The SP leadership also realised that transient votes would not come into its fold now that the party had lost power and patronage.

The clincher was the conversion of the 2007 assembly results to Lok Sabha results: the SP tally would go down from 39 to 19. For the Congress, it would dip from 9 to 2. For the BSP on the other hand, it would jump from 19 to 52.

The thaw
Months after that, signs of the SP and the Congress warming up to each other began showing up. On November 28, 2007 at debate on the Indo-US nuclear deal in the Lok Sabha, SP parliamentary party leader Ram Gopal Yadav sounded sympathetic to the circumstances surrounding the deal and showed himself amenable to prime ministerial persuasion that the agreement was India8217;s best option. 8220;We don8217;t have a friendly country like the Soviet Union anymore,8221; he intoned. 8220;We are in a hostile neighbourhood. We cannot remain in isolation. So we must establish a relationship with someone8230;I will touch upon the doubts about the Indo-US nuclear deal and would want the prime minister, when he responds, to allay the suspicions because if the people8217;s fears are allayed, it will be in the national interest and a huge debate will come to an end8230;if the prime minister8217;s credibility is hit, it is not a matter of his credibility alone, but of the whole nation8217;s8230;8221;

Then, two weeks after this ice-breaker, the two Yadavs8212;Lalu and Mulayam Singh8212;chose a dinner after a conclave organised by a Hindi daily in Delhi to discuss their common causes and the need for a joint platform. They were closeted for over an hour. It was followed by Mulayam visiting Lalu8217;s residence. The Railways Minister thus set the SP and the Congress moving forward on a common track.

A pattern was reinforced over a period of time: of a deterioration of BSP-Congress relations and drawing close of SP and Congress. In February, Rahul called Amar Singh after the death of the SP leader8217;s father. At its Kanpur conclave in March, Sonia termed BSP Government as corrupt and said Rahul was prepared to go to jail as part of a crusade against the Mayawati regime. Mayawati then lashed out at Rahul for allegedly 8220;purifying8221; himself with a 8220;special soap8221; after visiting Dalits homes on his UP travels in April. That same month, Amar Singh chaired a panel discussion at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.

In May came news of the public falling out between the SP and Left over the Women8217;s Bill8212;with Amar Singh dubbing it in his irrepressible style as the 8220;Brinda-Sushma bill8221;. The SP made it known that it was hurt by the Left8217;s 8220;arrogance8221;. It also seized the opportunity to declare that it wasn8217;t a pichchlaggu blind follower of the Left view on the nuclear deal. 8220;We got all the facts about the deal from the Left,8221; said Amar Singh. 8220;If the Government gives us more facts, we will go through them.8221; In May, the Congress also extended support to the SP candidate, former Chief Minister S. Bangarappa, against the BJP8217;s B.S. Yeddyurappa in Malnad in the Karnataka assembly polls.

Another event in May was the clinching stroke, so to say. Amar Singh was a notable invitee at the UPA8217;s fourth anniversary dinner at the Prime Minister8217;s residence. The prime minister8217;s table was the stage on which a realignment of political forces was actuated. It was formalised two months later.