Samajwadi Party leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh will attend a dinner hosted by Sonia Gandhi for the first time on February 16, but the only agenda on the table will be coordination between the Opposition parties in the Budget Session of Parliament and not UP politics. Following the latest split in the CLP in UP reducing it to 15 MLAs in the Assembly, the Congress is ‘‘of no use to us’’, SP sources maintained.There is, in fact, a quiet ‘‘I told you so’’ glee in the SP ranks with party sources claiming their leader Amar Singh had ‘‘warned Sonia more than a month ago’’ that her MLAs were planning to switch loyalties.And Congress’ contingent in UP is likely to diminish further, sources added, pointing out that its sudden softening towards the SP was a case of too little, too late.The main reason for the SP’s ire is that the Congress has always treated it as a threat, rather than a senior ally in the changed circumstances in UP. Congress leaders such as Salman Khurshid were against any tie-up with the SP on the grounds that the latter would usurp the secular space. ‘‘What the Congress does not realise is that it is the BSP and the BJP which have respectively taken away its Dalit and Brahmin base, not the SP. But it prefers to get decimated rather than support Mulayam’s leadership,’’ an SP leader asserted.The fact that the Congress has split twice over in UP indicates there is a large element of closet BJP supporters within and for Muslims and other secular forces ‘‘voting Congress is no longer a guaranteed vote for secularism.’’Now that the Congress has become ‘‘numerically, electorally, and politically irrelevant’’ for SP, the party will concentrate on consolidating its own base and ‘‘establish links’’ with disgruntled elements in the ruling coalition. To confront the Dalit-Brahmin combine of the BSP and BJP, the SP is firming up its MYTL alliance — Muslim, Yadav, Thakur, Lodh (the last thanks to Kalyan Singh) — and hopes to add more initials to its base which the Congress is in no position to provide. Floor coordination in Parliament and ‘‘consolidation of secular forces’’ at the national level will continue, but as far as Mulayam’s home base is concerned, the days of wooing Congress are, for the time being, over.
