Forget Mayawati, it’s Mulayam vs BJP in UP

LUCKNOW : The big news is that it’s all peaceful here all too suddenly. Chief minister Mayawati and her mentor, Kanshi Ram, have been away in Mumbai effectively to extend the influence of their party beyond the borders of UP, while Mulayam Singh Yadav and his lieutenants were busy holding the special session of their party’s national executive in Agra.And former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar was seen rubbing shoulders with Nanaji Deshmukh at Chitrakoot where the former inaugurated a concrete road built out of the latter’s MP fund on Sunday.
Indeed, there are reasons why the guns have fallen silent. First, it’s holi time. Second, all the major political players think it wise to keep themselves engaged in the waiting game till the ‘truth’ is unearthed through the rather slow, painstaking excavation process at Ayodhya. And third, believe it or not, they are all silently preparing for a snap Lok Sabha elections.
The current view in opposition circles is that both the Sangh Parivar and the Vajpayee government are working in tandem to recreate a pro-temple wave in the country. If something is found deep under the surface at Ayodhya, the VHP’s temple movement will get a big boost.
And even if nothing big is found therein by October this year, the Union government has in any case moved the Supreme Court to get the stay order on the ‘undisputed’ part of the land vacated. In the meantime, the VHP is preparing for its Delhi ‘satyagraha’ on March 27.
Ironically, the BJP also views the overall political scenario from the same angle. Party leaders don’t say so in as many words but they do put it on record that they have to be prepared to face the electorate all the time. At the moment, their honeymoon with the BSP continues, giving them the hope for a Dalit-upper caste consolidation in their favour. Should their tie-up with the BSP come to an abrupt end, the proposed Ram wave would carry them through, the BJP leaders feel.
But Mulayam Singh Yadav is a past-master at gauging the winds beforehand. He has anticipated that his main rival next time would be the BJP and not the BSP, unlike the previous assembly elections when the BJP was relegated to the third spot. Little wonder then that the Samajwadi party chief trained his guns mainly on the BJP during the special session of his party’s national executive at Agra. He said it was because of the BJP that the nation in general and the state in particular had come to such a sorry pass. It was time the BJP was thrown out of power from Delhi to Lucknow, he added.
The BSP is no less alert. It is keeping its options open vis-a-vis the BJP. Little wonder then that the party supremo Kanshi Ram appealed to the Dalits in Maharashtra to accept Buddhism as their religion just like Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar had done decades ago. On her part, Mayawati has already stepped up her anti-Manuwadi tirade.