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NEW DELHI: Samajwadi party chief Mulayam Singh has decided to contest the Bihar elections separate from the Janata Dal(U) led grand alliance. The reasons remain unclear leading to wild speculation that politicians insist is germane to the truth, namely the CBI threat that hovers above him like Shakespeare’s Damocles sword.
The news has been received with some glee in the BJP camp as a sign of bad days for Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. But interestingly, after the initial efforts to woo him by JD(U) president Sharad Yadav, the alliance has quite happily moved on maintaining that there is little he can do to influence the vote against the Grand Alliance.
After the initial worry, statistics from the ground have eased JD(U) concerns. As the Samajwadi party has performed dismally in both the 2010 Assembly elections and the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Bihar. Singh’s candidates in the last have all forfeited their security deposits, with several candidates getting as little as 300 odd votes in a parliamentary election. In the 2010 Assembly polls as well 146 SP candidates lost their deposits, securing positions at the bottom of the list of candidates from each constituency.
The Janata Dal(U) that was keen to project an alliance of all secular parties, and also tried to talk to the two communist parties to join them, has decided that the best route is to ignore those who “were friends but are not being friendly now.” As a senior leader said, “it would have of course been better if we had all been together, but those who have moved away are also those who have no base in Bihar at all.”
All politicians, including those from the BJP, privately admit that Mulayam Singh is worried about the CBI cases against him. And will do anything to keep himself out of the law enforcers loop. Both Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad have decided to soft peddle their responses to him, and ensuring that he remains out of the spotlights completely. This despite the fact that Mulayam Singh, predictably, has launched an attack on his old colleagues questioning their secular credentials. He is also related to Lalu Prasad by marriage but said to reporters in Lucknow that this should not be brought to bear on politics.
“I have directed my partymen and also that of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar (JD-U) not to make any derogatory remarks on any statement of SP president Mulayam Singh Yadav,” Lalu Prasad told reporters.
“Mulayam Singh jee is not only a tall leader but also my ‘samdhi’. We share ‘beti-roti’ (daughter and bread) relationship with each other,” Prasad, whose daughter is married to Yadav’s grand nephew, added.
“Being his ‘samdhi’, if he (Mulayam Singh) gets more angry we will give him a yellow dhoti (worn during time to marriage),” he said in a lighter vein.
