Samajwadi Party, RJD isolated, find no role in realignment

Two champions of the anti-Ayodhya movement who later emerged as key OBC players in the Hindi heartland — Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav — are growing isolated at a time when the Congress, JD(U), RLD, Left and the DMK are coming closer to check the BJP while the BJD and the AIADMK are watching the game by maintaining distance from both the Congress and the BJP.

The BSP, another key player in the Hindi belt, is trying hard to keep its dalit vote-bank intact from the BJP and the Congress which are trying to make a dent in it by adopting Dr B.R. Ambedkar as their icon.

BSP supremo Mayawati is not worried about the Samajwadi Party, the RJD and other OBC and regional parties after knowing that neither they nor LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan can pose any threat to her dalit vote-bank in Uttar Pradesh.

Although the SP led by Mr Mulayam Yadav and the RJD led by Mr Lalu Yadav are in power in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, they are finding no role in the process of realignment. They cannot even become the nucleus of a third alternative because their parties are captured by their relatives.

Mr Mulayam Yadav was supposed to lead a battle against the BJP in the Bihar elections but he felt cheated by Mr Nitish Kumar and Mr Lalu Yadav and this had damaged the unity of the Janata Parivar under the new banner.

Mr Mulayam Yadav was once the prime ministerial candidate of the Left in the United Front regime but his “politics of convenience” and the U-turn on the nuclear deal with the US put a question mark on his leadership of a third force.

Now the Trinamul Congress, AIADMK and the BJD do not trust him. As far as the RJD is concerned, it was never trusted by the Left, and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has been uncomfortable with Mr Lalu Yadav. The SP was compelled to back the Manmohan Singh government for 10 years due to a number of reasons.