Riding Left, SP shows up at Sonia dinner…

All dressed up and nowhere to go. That may be the unfortunate position of the Samajwadi Party in the wake of the Congress’s surprising ...

All dressed up and nowhere to go. That may be the unfortunate position of the Samajwadi Party in the wake of the Congress’s surprising performance in the elections, but Amar Singh did manage to be at the only party that mattered today.

It must have certainly taken all of the SP general secretary’s social skills and frenzied manouevring but he was present tonight at the dinner at Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s house where her pre-poll allies met to discuss government formation.

Singh later admitted he and Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Ajit Singh didn’t have an invite (the SP and RLD are not pre-poll allies of the Congress) but went riding piggyback on friend and Sonia’s important guest, the CPI(M)’s Harkishen Singh Surjeet. ‘‘I don’t lie. We did not have any invitation to take part in the dinner meeting but we were requested by Surjeet to accompany him,’’ Singh told Aaj Tak. ‘‘We went because we did not want our egos to come in the way of formation of a secular government at the Centre.’’

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He said Surjeet rang him up to say the invite could not be communicated to the SP as he was not in town. ‘‘On receiving the phone, I readily agreed but told him that the RLD had also to be taken along.’’

The Congress too tried to make out that the SP had all along been on Sonia’s guest list. ‘‘The matter was blown out of proportion due to a communication gap and the party is grateful to the SP for its gesture,’’ said Suresh Pachauri.

Singh’s presence at the dinner came as a complete surprise as earlier in the day, SP chief and UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav had left for Lucknow, leading to speculation that talks on the party joining a Congress-led government weren’t making headway. Talking to reporters in the state capital, he said he ‘‘had no knowledge of a dinner meeting’’.

The SP, that until three days ago threatened to play a decisive role in the formation of an alternative government, is today at the mercy of the Congress, despite getting a stupendous 37 Lok Sabha seats in UP. Parliamentary board members have authorised Mulayam to decide if the party would join the government or give outside support, and the latter has said he would go along with whatever Surjeet can work out. With the Left endorsing Sonia as PM today, Mulayam too is likely to follow suit.

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In private, party leaders admit they are keen to join the government, and the SP’s hope is that Comrade Surjeet can pull off a respectable bargain to allow them to do so.

After all, there is enough bad blood between the Congress and SP. The two have had a long-standing public feud ever since the SP stopped Sonia from becoming PM five years ago. This is why the SP was reluctant to forge a pre-poll secular alliance with the party, and has been ambivalent on accepting Sonia’s leadership.

At the same time, the Congress cannot risk isolating the SP. Together, the Congress and allies have a marginal majority in Parliament and it may need Mulayam’s help in case of differences on policy matters with formal partners like the Left, RJD or others.

Surjeet himself has made it clear since the day the change at the Centre became clear that every party that fought ‘‘the communal and fascist BJP and NDA’’ should be invited to join the government, so as to strengthen the hands of the secular front.