The immediate target is stated to be Uttar Pradesh, but the real objective may well be more ambitious.
In Ayodhya yesterday, Mulayam Singh Yadav issued a call to the Congress to support his Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh to form a government, and promptly received a supportive echo from Nagpur where senior Congress leader Sharad Pawar said an SP-Congress alliance was in the interest of both. Yadav wants the Congress to promptly sever its tenuous alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Clearly, a new equation is emerging amidst the political imbroglio at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh. For quite some time now, the Samajwadi party has been inching closer to a willing Congress, with the immediate objective of joining hands in Uttar Pradesh after the Congress formally dumps its alliance with the BSP. The alliance, in any case, has remained restricted to Uttar Pradesh, with the two parties fighting against each other in Punjab.
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Pawar said new equations were emerging with some regional parties willing to join the Congress. Sections who had been alienated were also coming closer to the Congress, he claimed.
The semblance of the Congress-BSP alliance, however, continues for the forthcoming byelections to the Baghpat Lok Sabha seat and five assembly constituencies in Uttar Pradesh. But the tension is all too evident.
Yadav has been quick to cash in, and has been in close contact with Congress president Sitaram Kesari over the past one month. From the United Fronts perspective, Yadavs advances towards Kesari have not been frowned upon so far since all along Yadav has been dictating the Fronts policy on Uttar Pradesh.
But with Pawar lending overt support to Yadav, Front leaders have reason to feel queasy over Yadavs actions, since they could well lead to new formulations at the Centre too.
Meanwhile, the BSP is at pains to declare that the alliance with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh is not over. BSP leader Mayawati said in Lucknow yesterday the alliance was intact and allaged that a disinformation campaign had been launched that it was over.
She, however, remains strongly critical of the Congress for allegedly adopting a soft policy towards the H D Deve Gowda government.
Pawar, however, was more forthright on where the alliance stood. He said while the Congress had adhered to its commitment, BSP chief Kanshi Ram had broken the understanding by initiating talks with the Bharatiya Janata Party and later unilaterally spurning an alliance with the Congress in Punjab. The SP and the Congress coming together was a sequel to the BSPs shifting stand towards the Congress, he said.
For the record, Pawar, however, remarked that the break-up with the BSP was not complete since such decisions were not taken on the spur of the moment.
But he made his preferences clear at a time when the Congress and the SP are reported to have joined hands for the February elections to the Mumbai municipal corporation.