Aditi Phadnis: Out of the A-list

PLAIN POLITICS/ A school admission controversy has left Amar Singh feeling compromised

Today, arguably, there is no politician in Uttar Pradesh more powerful than Samajwadi Party secretary Amar Singh. He can lampoon Congress president Sonia Gandhi without bothering about the consequences.

The two Lok Sabha by-election victories "" in Akbarpur and Mainpuri "" have reinforced his closeness to UP chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, so whatever criticism there was in the Samajwadi Party (SP) against him has also dwindled away.

In power politics, you are as only big as your last electoral victory. The fact that in the two constituencies a vigilant Election Commission posted only central government officers (so that the state government could do nothing to influence the electorate) and still the Congress and the BJP lost their deposit, merely underlines that Amar Singh is where he has always sought to be "" right on top.

And yet, it was as if impotence and rage had consumed him when he met reporters on a cold and windy afternoon and told them that his twin daughters had been refused admission in a school because of the authorities' apprehension that his antipathy to the Congress government and to Sonia Gandhi might rebound on them, were they to admit the two three-year-olds. The children are just learning how to speak.

It is a small issue but one that wounded Singh so deeply that he wrote to defence minister Pranab Mukherjee about it.

The school was founded for the children of bureaucrats who, because of constantly being moved around the country, are deprived of continuity in education. It was founded by the wife of former cabinet secretary Surinder Singh, and the wife of the serving cabinet secretary, ex officio, was allowed to become the chairman.

So former cabinet secretary Prabhat Kumar's wife became the chairman and the current cabinet secretary's wife is the current chairman.

This would appear to be a most dissatisfactory arrangement, where you can assume a post of power simply because you are somebody's wife, but leave that aside for a moment.

When Mulayam Singh Yadav was defence minister, the Ministry of Defence also donated, at Singh's instance, Rs 3 crore to the school. As the school established itself, politicians and industrialists also began sending their children to it. It would appear to have become the place where the rich and the famous can send their kids for assured admission.

Amar Singh filled up the admission forms and went for the interview, having taken the precaution first of meeting the defence minister and informing him that he wanted admission for his children.

At first the school told him the girls would be admitted; then they turned him down. When UP chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav spoke to the cabinet secretary about the issue, he was told that recommendations made by Jagdish Tytler and Buta Singh had been turned down, so who was Amar Singh?

It is funny how personal events sometimes transform the course of political events. UP leader Sanjay Singh's distance from then Prime Minister V P Singh began when V P Singh disowned Sanjay Singh in Parliament following a criminal case against the latter.

When the opposition taunted V P Singh about the case and asked him about his "son-in-law" Sanjay Singh's involvement, VP said: "I don't have a daughter so how can I have a son-in-law?"

In fact, Sanjay Singh's 'official' wife Garima was related to the Raja of Manda. In the tightly-knit clannish Thakur politics, this alienated not just Sanjay Singh but a powerful section of the Thakurs from VP, eventually driving them "" and him "" into the arms of the BJP.

Similiarly, it was allegations of a deeply personal and petty nature, made by railway minister Lalu Prasad against BJP president L K Advani in connection with his daughter-in-law, Gauri Sabharwal, that saw Atal Bihari Vajpayee emerge to lead from the front, a development no one had really expected. As Advani refused to speak or acknowledge Lalu Prasad, Vajpayee went into battle on his friend's behalf.

Amar Singh is not clear whom to blame. He wants to believe that it is because of Sonia Gandhi that his daughters have been refused admission, two innocents penalised for the actions of their father.

But he does admit that Gandhi probably doesn't even know this has happened. He was under the impression he was part of the circle of around 100 families who run Delhi's A-list. Now he learns that not only is he not, he's not about to be let into the circle either.

The net result is that his "" and the Samajwadi Party's "" attacks on the Congress have become even sharper. Earlier this week he asked the Congress to tell him exactly how they were fighting communal forces. Hadn't the party yielded space to the BJP in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa... And when the Congress was ranged against the forces of secularism (the Left) in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, how could that party berate him for attending functions organised by Atal Bihari Vajpayee?

The whole controversy about school admissions may be a trivial one. After all, aren't parents all over India facing this very problem. But in Amar Singh's case, it is likely to become the heart of the problem.

His distance from the Congress began after a social snub from Sonia Gandhi. It was compounded when he went, uninvited, to a meeting of UPA leaders after the elections, to 10 Janpath and came away insulted.

Now it transpires that the cabinet secretary thinks his children are not good enough to attend a school because of the repercussions this might have in the power equilibrium.

Amar Singh is seething with rage because the way he sees it, his "" and by extension, the Samajwadi Party's "" standing has been compromised.

He is getting the feeling that he is being patronised and is likely to flail out in all directions to prove he isn't. The next opportunity will be the Bihar assembly election. Watch out for the raging bull.