New Delhi

April 27, 2004

MULAYAM FEELS BADLY HURT BY VAJPAYEE

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav feels badly
hurt by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's deliberate mischief of claiming his Samajwadi Party as closer to the BJP ideologically. Vajpayee's ploy was to confuse the Muslim votebank of Mulayam but the realisation has dawned on the BJP only after the polling on Monday that this trick has inadvertently helped the Congress as an approximately 15
per cent Muslim votes have drifted from the Samajwadi Party to the Congress. While the Congress was nowhere in the reckoning earlier, this shift has put in a position to win a considerable number of seats. While the Media is projecting Mulayam as the "kingmaker" and "backseat" driver of the new government if the verdict is fractured with a hung Lok Sabha, he is personally worried that all his plans may crash in the next round involving 30 Lok Sabha seats if the impact of the Monday round increases in the coming days. His Samajwadi Party had won 14 of these 30 seats in 1999 while the BJP had won seven. The BJP is no more targeting Samajwadi Party as its full concentration in this round is on seven reserved seats besides carpet-bombing the marginal constituencies.

It is not Vajpayee alone who has confused the Muslim voters of Mulayam as Mulayam is himself guilty of confusing them by giving a clean chit to BJP leader Lalji Tandon in the Saree episode in which 22 women were killed in the stampede in Lucknow on April 12. Nobody had believed the Media reports
that Mulayam can go with the BJP-led NDA after the polls but his one gesture of help to Tandon made everybody doubt his intentions. While Mulayam is finding it difficult to remove the pro-BJP tag stuck on him, he is trying hard to get back to the secular camp led by Congress after realising that the NDA may not get the majority and hence he can play some role at the Centre only by stressing on his secular credentials. The CPM comrades are helping him to remove the antipathy of the Congress towards him and the first indications of the Congress softening its attitude came on Tuesday when its spokesman S Jaipal Reddy stressed that the Congerss
does recognise that the Samajwadi Party is a secular-minded party.

At one stage Mulayam was contemplating to bargain the post of the Deputy Prime Minister for himself but he is now not sure how many seats his Samajwadi Party will be able to win and hence his first priority is to keep the Congress in good humour lest the latter withdraws support to his government in Uttar Pradesh after the polls. He is, however, still
confident that the Samajwadi Party would be able to acquire the status of a national party from his strategy of fielding candidates in six states.

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A COMMUNIST AS PRIME MINISTER ?

Somnath as PM?: Encouraged by the exit polls showing decline of NDA's popularity, the CPM has taken the lead in approaching various political parties to prepare from now onwards for a secular front that musters the number needed to claim the majority before the President immediately ater
the results are out on May 13. CPM leader Harkishen Surjit has not only spoken to Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav in this regard but he has also phoned Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar to come to Delhi and take the responsibility of uniting all secular parties since he is already free from the election in his own constituency. Importance of the CPM has gone up further as the Congress too recognises that it would need the left parties in any case to muster the majority. There should be no surprise if there is a flare-up in the secular front against the leadership of Sonia Gandhi and as such the CPM may even put forward the candidature of veteran CPM leader Somnath Chatterjee as the consensus candidate for the Prime Ministership.

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DHARMENDRA'S FRESH HEADACHE - IS HE A JAT OR A RAMGARHIA ?

Bollywood actor Dharmendra would have never expected that his plunge into the electoral politics would expose his personal matters. First the controversy rose over his two wives and the non-declaration by him about Hema Malini as his wife in the affidavit he filed with the nomination papers for the Bikaner Lok Sabha seat. The Rajasthan Pradesh Jat Sabha has now challenged even his claim to be a Jat,
stressing that he is actually a Ramgarhia. Residents of his native village, Dango in Ludhiana district of Punjab, have, however, come to his rescue to assert that he was very much a Jat. According to village Sarpanch Jaspal Singh, Dharmendra is a Jat belonging to the Deol caste and this is recorded in the revenue records in which he is shown as owning two
acres of land, a plot and a dilapidated house where he was born and brought up. Japal is even planning to go alongwith a few Jats from the village to Bikaner to establish his credentials as a Jat. The BJP had chosen Dharmendra only because he is a Jat and as such he can secure the
community's votes in the constituency and also influence the Jats in other constituencies.

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MONEY MORE THAN MAYAWATI !

Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati felt quite embarrassed on Monday when she had to abruptly end her speech in
Bageshwar in Uttaranchal on being told that she was campaigning for the party's candidate Shyam Lal who has gone to the returning officer and withdrawn his candidature for the Almora seat. A day earlier, she was campaigning for BSP's candidate Yaqub Siddiqui contesting for Tehri seat,
and she had not thought that the man who moved alongwith her for the whole day would ditch her the very next day by withdrawing from the contest. Siddiqui has been a Congress leader and he had chosen to file the nomination on the BSP ticket after the Congress did not make him its candidate. Approached by a senior Muslim Congress leader from Delhi with promise to compensate him after the polls, Siddiqui preferred to bid goodbye to Mayawati and return to the Congress fold.