Column

The Congress and the Samajwadi Party are stooping, not to conquer, but to squabble, that too in full glare of TV cameras. The grand honeymoon ended even before Pranab Mukherjee flew to Washington to ink the nuclear deal for which the two parties entered into an unholy pact that nearly jettisoned the Manmohan Singh government. The rumblings are nasty and tempers are fraying as the much talked about seat-sharing arrangement proves elusive. Friends of Amar Singh believe that Satyavrat Chaturvedi, who fired at him without warning the other day, is a sniper of the Brahmin-Muslim lobby in the Congress that wants to block an alliance with the Yadav-Thakur dominated SP at all costs. In Congress circles, Amar Singh is the villain of the piece. They are pushing the line that his frequent diatribes against the Congress are not the result of verbal diarrhoea, but part of a calculated strategy to pressurise the government into dropping the slew of cases, income tax and otherwise, against him, Mulayam Singh and their many cronies. While the mice fight, the cats watch. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi remain wrapped in enigmatic silence and Mulayam Singh surfaces infrequently to profess allegiance to an alliance that hasn’t been sealed yet.

Their hands-off attitude is curious because Mayawati is doing her best to muddy the waters in UP. She has unveiled a quixotic strategy in Gandhiland. She plans to field a local muscleman with a notorious reputation against Rahul Gandhi in Amethi but she seems ready to virtually “gift’’ neighbouring Rae Bareli to Sonia Gandhi by putting up what’s known in political circles as a “weak candidate’’. According to reports from UP, the man readying to take on Rahul Gandhi is Ashish Shukla. Mayawati is said to have given him four cars and a stash of funds and he’s already hit the road. Shukla is a fearsome and feared opponent. His name strikes terror in the hearts of Congress workers who have had run-ins with him in the past. His notoriety dates back to the 1989 elections when he attacked the Janata Dal nominee from Amethi, Sanjay Singh. Ironically, he was then a member of the Congress. According to reports from that election, Shukla fired at Singh during an election meeting and injured him in the stomach. He moved away from the Congress when Singh joined it. Shukla may not win but as a shaky Congress sympathiser admitted, he has enough nuisance value to tie Rahul Gandhi down to Amethi at a time when he should be travelling the country as the Congress party’s star campaigner. Sonia Gandhi, on the other hand, is expected to have a smooth ride back against the BSP’s Khushwaha. Khush-who? Apparently, even the voters of Rae Bareli are not taking him seriously.

The UP cauldron has been put on to boil. Caste lines were drawn in the last assembly elections. Now the two claimants for hegemony, the BSP and SP, have drawn lines in the Congress. Mayawati has kept her options open with Sonia Gandhi while Amar Singh has pinned his hopes on Rahul Gandhi. It looks like the BJP is being squeezed.

TAILPIECE

In the end, when the Indo-US nuclear deal was signed, it happened without much fanfare. Pranab Mukherjee was discouraged from carrying a media team with him when he flew to Washington for the signing ceremony. He went by commercial flight with a small team of officials and it was left to the Indian embassy in Washington to round up the local Indian press for media coverage.

Instead of the expected bang, it was a whimper.

Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net