As SP comes closer,Congress keeps fingers crossed

A Partner in reforms?

As the UPA leadership prepares,rather hopes,to go full throttle with reforms,many in the ruling dispensation wonder whether Mulayam would be their comrade-in-arms. Given his track record during the United Front government in which he was defence minister,UPA managers have reasons for hope.

Replying to a starred question by Manmohan Singh in the Rajya Sabha on November 21,1997 on whether the government had worked out a plan to dismantle the administered pricing mechanism in petroleum products,the then petroleum minister Janeshwar Mishra gave an elaborate answer asserting that the government had decided in September that year “to dismantle APM by introducing reforms in a phased manner” and giving out details of the phasing of dismantling programme including,among others,moving the consumer prices of petro products to market prices. Mishra was said to have been opposed to the move,but the UF leadership had got Mulayam to prevail over his party ideologue. In another instance,Mulayam had got another party colleague,the then telecom minister Beni Prasad Verma,to move the TRAI Bill in Parliament.

Days after extending support to Pranab Mukherjee’s candidature for President,Mulayam evinced interest in determining the UPA’s policies,as he shot off a letter to the finance ministry batting for existing players on spectrum fee. While jury is still out on the longevity of the SP-Congress alliance,the SP,unlike the TMC,is likely to be more open to reasoned policy initiatives,believe UPA managers,even as they remain wary of the SP’s “interest-induced interventions”.

SP leaders have of late been eager to dispel the notion that their ideological make-up puts blinkers on them when it comes to crucial reforms. A senior SP leader endorsed Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s move to bring down fuel and fertiliser subsidies. “We believe in pragmatic reforms. As long as it is not anti-farmer or anti-people,we welcome pragmatic reforms. For instance,something has to be done about diesel subsidy,but some mechanism has to be found out by which farmers are not affected,” he said.

When he ditched Rajiv

The SP’s approach to economic reforms is perhaps not as worrisome for the UPA leadership as the nature of Mulayam’s politics itself. First elected to the Uttar Pradesh assembly as a Socialist Party candidate in 1967,Mulayam swears by the socialist ideologue Ram Manohar Lohia whose anti-Congressism has defined his politics. As leader of opposition in the UP legislative council,he was known to breathe fire against the Congress. He earned a name for himself for cornering the then Congress chief minister V P Singh on an anti-dacoity campaign,and became part of the Janata Dal that was formed in 1989.

During his first stint as UP chief minister in 1989-1991,Mulayam had switched allegiance from the BJP to the Congress to keep his government afloat. Despite N D Tiwari’s reservations,Rajiv Gandhi had decided to extend support to Mulayam.

Tiwari was forced by Rajiv to vote for the government in the no-confidence motion moved by then Janata Dal leader Rewati Raman Singh. After the Congress withdrew support from the Chandra Shekhar government at the Centre,Rajiv was said to have offered his party’s support to Mulayam’s government,provided the two parties entered into an alliance for the Lok Sabha polls.

Mulayam agreed,only to change his mind late in the night and dissolve the assembly. He met Governor B Satyanarayana Reddy,a socialist,at the crack of dawn to carry out this exercise.

While Sonia Gandhi had then watched Mulayam’s somersault from the sidelines,she got a taste of it in 1999 when she made an unsuccessful bid to form the government after Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government lost the trust vote. As narrated by BJP leader L K Advani in his autobiography,George Fernandes had got Mulayam to belie Sonia’s claim of having 272 MPs on her side. Mulayam,with 22 MPs,had secretly met Advani to commit that he would not extend support to Sonia,provided the BJP-led NDA went for elections. Mulayam later met President K R Narayanan and dissociated his party from the Congress’s bid to form the government.

“It is highly erroneous to say that he played ball with the NDA. He had made his decision independently and wanted elections as the government had lost the majority in the House,” said SP general secretary and an old Mulayam associate,Mohan Singh.

Congress pays back

The Congress returned the favour five years later. After the 2004 general elections,Mulayam was willing to join the Congress-led government at the Centre and sought the help of then CPM general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet. At the UPA dinner where the common minimum programme was being signed with Jairam Ramesh getting the signatures,Surjeet arrived with Mulayam’s (then) close aide Amar Singh. Ramesh rushed to Sonia to enquire whether he should get Amar’s signatures. As Sonia instructed against it,Amar left in a huff. Mulayam and Amar reportedly harboured a deep grudge against Sonia for years to come.

The SP later sought to forge a non-Congress,non-BJP front called the United National Progressive Alliance and also sought to get A P J Abdul Kalam re-elected President in 2007. But a year later,the SP was there to bail out the UPA during the trust vote forced by the Left’s decision to withdraw support over the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The Congress and the SP had a blow-hot-blow-cold relationship since 2008,and their relationship nosedived in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls when the Congress decided against an alliance with the SP after the failure of their seat-sharing negotiations.

As AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi embarked on his Mission 2012 in UP,the Congress-SP relations further worsened with Rahul targeting both the SP as well as Mayawati’s ruling BSP.

Will he,won’t he?

In this backdrop,not many are ready to place a bet on how long the latest bonhomie between the Congress and the SP would last. While Mulayam has inherited anti-Congressism from his ideological mentor,a section of the Congress believes that the two parties could still do business.

One such optimist is Congress leader Pramod Tiwari,who was leader of the legislature party in the UP assembly for over two decades. “As far as certain issues are concerned,we can come together. They (SP) don’t care about principles and ideology as long as they get what they want,” says Pramod Tiwari.

Some Congress leaders believe that the longevity of the UPA government will hinge on whether the SP joins it or not. Post the 2008 trust vote,the SP had been desperate to join the government,and had put tremendous pressure on the Congress for the same when UPA-II came to power in 2009. Rahul Gandhi was said to have been the biggest stumbling block then,as sharing power with the SP at the Centre would have undermined his Mission 2012 in UP.

While the Congress is now keen to have the SP on board,the latter has decided to play it tough.

SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav has asserted that his party does not want to join the Central government,nor does it want to force mid-term polls. SP leaders explain that the party would not like to share the UPA’s anti-incumbency by joining the government. They would rather follow the UPA I-Left power-sharing model and enjoy power without responsibility.

The alliance would,however,keep getting more tenuous as the next general elections — scheduled for 2014 — come closer.

Not many in either party are giving this SP-Congress arrangement two years though.

Besides the disproportionate assets case dogging him,Mulayam needs the Centre in fulfilling all the promises the SP had made to people in UP in the assembly election.

The SP supremo is,however,likely to be the first to bolt out of the UPA stable the moment he sees the shadow of anti-incumbency on the SP regime in UP. Much would also depend on how political realignments shape up at the national level in ensuing months,and any political scenario stoking his prime ministerial ambition could spell doom for UPA-II.