Samajwadi goes Mulayam Singh Yadav, hit by Beni Beni Prasad Verma again

Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav’s bravado challenging the UPA government turned into a whimper, even as his beta noire, the irrepressible steel minister Beni Prasad Verma, had yet another dig at him on Thursday. Seizing the opportunity of the Supreme Court sentencing Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt to five years of imprisonment, Verma remarked, “Whosoever goes with Mulayam has to be ready to go to jail one day.”

Earlier, a mellowed Mulayam told his MPs at a meeting of the party’s parliamentary board not to send any signs of threats to the UPA government. While some believe it was an effect of Congress president Sonia Gandhi approaching him with folded hands, others say the CBI raids on DMK leader MK Stalin changed his mood. During the hour-long meeting, many Samajwadi Party MPs slammed Verma, but agreed with Mulayam that since Sonia and prime minister Manmohan Singh have personally intervened, the party should wait for the outcome.

Noting that Sonia has already expressed regrets, Mulayam dropped hints of some kind of assurance he extracted on Verma, saying a decision on the matter will be taken at the right time. The meeting of the party MPs came a day after Verma denied the remarks attributed to him in a daily that Mulayam takes “commission” to support the UPA government and expressed “regrets” publicly after meeting the prime minister.

Many Congress MPs are already angry with Verma for rubbing Mulayam on the wrong side at a time when the party has to bank upon the SP for survival of the government after the DMK’s sudden pullout. Until Thursday morning when Mulayam lowered his gun, the Congress leaders were seeing some nasty design behind his meeting with Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Wednesday as if he were pushing for early polls and planning to forge coalition of the regional parties.

As the SP supremo, Mulayam always has authority to take decisions on behalf of the party and yet he told reporters that the meeting authorised him to “take any decision on any issue at an appropriate time in the interest of the party.”

@iftikhargilani