This is even as little progress has been achieved on seat sharing among the United Front parties, with only two days left for the governor to notify the polls. The partners, unable to agree on a seat-sharing formula, extrapolating from earlier results, have decided to discuss rival claims on each seat in detail.
Ajit Singh, who had joined the Congress in 1993, has now formed an axis with the other Jat leader of western UP, Mahendra Singh Tikait. They want to be part of the front, though Ajit Singh need not be open about it since he does not want to contest the assembly elections himself and would lose his seat under the anti-defection law if he were to resign from the Congress.
Sources close to Gowda said that he is bent on including the new axis in the United Front and had dwelt at length on this at a meeting of Front parties yesterday afternoon.
Yadav - who won the political battle against Ajit Singh to inherit Charan Singh's mantle after a prolonged struggle - did not attend that meeting on the pretext of a funeral in Bareilly. However, inquiries revealed that Yadav was in the capital in the afternoon. He had hosted a meeting of Front leaders in the morning to discuss seat sharing.
At the meeting, Gowda was upset over Yadav's reluctance to accommodate the Jat leaders from western UP. He told the participants, including ND Tiwari, CM Ibrahim, Ram Vilas Paswan and Sharad Yadav, that his efforts to woo the farmers of the state through various packages during the past month would go to waste without a tie-up with Ajit and Tikait. We will not be able to cash in on the atmosphere that we built with so much effort, he reportedly said.
Barring the Samajwadi Party, other Front constituents are supporting Gowda in his conviction that the BJP can be checked to some extent in its stronghold of western UP, with the help of some support from the Jats, if the Front allies with Ajit.
Though leaders like Sharad Yadav were not very enthused initially with Gowda's idea - because Ajit split the Dal in 1992 - sources say they have reconciled to the idea now, as both the Dal and the SP are weak in the Jat-dominated areas of western UP.
Even CPI(M) general secretary HKS Surjeet, who is Yadav's staunchest ally in the Front, is believed to have indicated his support to Gowda's proposal at a Front meeting a couple of days ago.
When asked whether roping in Ajit and Tikait could counter the BJP in western UP, Surjeet said: I don't know about the move, but I am sure the BJP would be defeated. Another CPI(M) politbureau member said the Ajit camp could be accommodated if their demand for seat sharing was sober. Another front leader said he thought Ajit and Tikait would settle for 30 seats.
When contacted, Ajit refused to comment on whether he would join the Front but his supporters said his camp could settle for 45 seats. Initially, Singh had given a list of 100 seats but is believed to have scaled that down to 83.
Tikait has registered a new party with the Election Commission and has offered the presidentship to Ajit, according to reports in the local press.
The younger Jat is under tremendous pressure from his supporters to sever his ties with the Congress, which they believe has treated him very shabbily. At an impromptu meeting with Ajit at his residence yesterday, about 300 leaders and supporters told him he was sidelined to such an extent that he was seen nowhere in the pictures and TV news coverage of the Congress forums' meetings.
There is so much resentment against the Congress in western UP that your quitting the party would spark the enthusiasm among the farmers which was the hallmark of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (a party formed by Ajit's father, the late Charan Singh in the 1970s), some senior Jats told him.
