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The Thaw In The Coming
 May 2007
signalled that Mulayam’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.
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 India’s best option. “We don’t have a
friendly country like the
Soviet Union
anymore,” he intoned. “We are in a hostile neighbourhood. We cannot
remain in isolation. So we must establish a relationship with
someone...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 people’s fears are allayed, it will be
in the national interest and a huge debate will come to an end...if
the prime minister’s credibility is hit, it is not a matter of his
credibility alone, but of the whole nation’s...”
Then, two weeks
after this ice-breaker, the two Yadavs—Lalu and Mulayam Singh—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
Lalu’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 leader’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
“purifying” himself with a “special soap” 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 Women’s
Bill—with Amar Singh dubbing it in his irrepressible style as the
“Brinda-Sushma bill”. The SP made it known that it was hurt by the
Left’s “arrogance”. It also seized the opportunity to declare that
it wasn’t a pichchlaggu (blind follower) of the Left view on the
nuclear deal. “We got all the facts about the deal from the Left,”
said Amar Singh. “If the Government gives us more facts, we will go
through them.” In May, the Congress also extended support to the SP
candidate, former Chief Minister S. Bangarappa, against the BJP’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 UPA’s fourth anniversary dinner at the Prime
Minister’s residence. The prime minister’s table was the stage on
which a realignment of political forces was actuated. It was
formalised two months later when Amar Singh was finally served
pakoras with tea at 10, Janpath. The
Dalal Street had
won.
23
July, 2008
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