Mulayam’s negative politics hard to fathom

Mulayam Singh Yadav, UP’s most significant political player of the past three decades and founder of the Samajwadi Party that his chief minister son Akhilesh Yadav now presides over after prevailing over his father in a bitter in-house struggle, appears to have taken few lessons from life.

He made belligerent noises against the Akhilesh faction until the Election Commission recently overlooked his claims and allotted the party’s symbol to the son. This was in recognition of the fact that the latter appeared to have sway over nearly cent per cent of UP’s ruling party.

The changed situation should have persuaded any reasonable and experienced politician that the wind was not with him and a generational shift had occurred, a shift that favours a very different grammar of politics than the one practised by Mulayam and his cohorts that include younger brother Shivpal.

But the senior Yadav has been slow to grasp this, in spite of his phenomenal political skills as well skills at political skulduggery.

After Akhilesh and his alliance partner Rahul Gandhi, the Congress vice-president, held a roadshow in Lucknow on Sunday and a joint press conference marked by bonhomie, Mulayam lashed out at the newly-sealed SP-Congress alliance and said he would not campaign for it.

It is not clear if Mulayam has grown senile early, or whether he is being manipulated by forces inimical to his CM son. Tongues have wagged over the years to suggest that his inner moves frequently give comfort to BJP, against which Akhilesh, in Congress’ company this time, is waging a ferocious battle.

It is more than likely, and wily old Mulayam cannot but know it, that an important reason the CM may have sought an alliance with the Congress, a much smaller player in the state, is to neutralise any negative moves in the election season by the SP “old guard” of Mulayam and Shivpal, with wily Amar Singh crafting malignant moves in the background.

When asked, Rahul spoke of the “possibility” of the SP-Congress linkage in UP extending to the Lok Sabha poll of 2019 though he did say this had not been discussed between the two sides. That’s fair enough. Everything would depend on the nature of the result of the Assembly poll. If the “secular” alliance, does not make it, it is entirely possible that part of the SP base moves to the BJP in case Mulayam cannot lead any more.

It is also not unthinkable that if the alliance falls well short and BSP supremo Mayawati is in the lead but needs a leg-up, Congress may offer her a helping hand as hers too is a secular outfit. Much unspoken politics remains in the UP situation.