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Mulayam is at wooing game again

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Samajwadi Party chief and Defence Minister Mulayam Singh is playing the wooing game once again.

If he used the Babri Masjid issue to win Muslim confidence, if he could get industrialist Sanjay Dalmia on his party forefront to woo the business class, if, after failing to cut any ice with cinestar Raj Babbar's tinsel charisma, he could manage to bring in Amitabh Bachchan to make subtle efforts to strike a rapport with the lady at 10, Janpath, it is but natural for him now to use the country's leading liaison man Amar Singh to woo the thakurs, isn't it? After all, they form eight per cent of the UP votebank.

As in the past when he went all out projecting his new found compatriots Babbar and Dalmia, the SP chief is now busy promoting Amar Singh as the Hero of Now in the five-star village of Saifai, his home constituency, in an otherwise neglected Etawah district.

While promoting Dalmia, Mulayam had not thought twice before handing over three state-owned cement companies to him for a song. All his socialism went for a toss when he took the drastic decision to privatise the State Cement Corporation. He did not even hesitate to gag the voice of cement workers who were fired upon by the police for protesting against the move!

Dalmia was then seen beside Mulayam at every fora. He never tired of echoing the industrialist's credentials as a 'committed socialist.'

This went on till Babbar joined Mulayam's bandwagon. Then it was the ex-star's turn to be shown around as the SP showpiece. Mulayam doled out to Babbar the Yash Bharti award which he had instituted. And in the last Lok Sabha elections, Mulayam even went on to offer Babbar a ticket against BJP's invincible stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Lucknow.

But once the election results were declared and the picture was amply clear that the actor had failed to make any impact on the electorate, Mulayam did not hesitate to dump him. Thanks to his new-found friend Amar Singh, the politician was able to strike a chord with Bachchan.

Mulayam began by flying all the way to Bombay to honour the superstar's father Harvanshrai Bachchan with the same Yash Bharti he had once handed Babbar. The Big B reciprocated this gesture by coming down to Saifai and performing before Mulayam's electorate.

But despite his best efforts, Mulayam failed to get Bachchan to join his party or even help him with 10, Janpath. His efforts to rope in Bachchan to address a few election meetings last year also proved futile.

It was time for Mulayam to find yet another face to fulfill his long cherished political objective -- of wooing the upper castes. With brahmins not responding to his overtures, he did not hesitate to sideline even old socialist comrades like Janeshwar Misra, Rama Shankar Kaushik and Madhukar Dighe.

He considered the possibility of tapping the thakurs, who had remained a neglected lot ever since the death of Veer Bahadur Singh and the downfall of V P Singh. And he could think of none other than his chum Amar Singh to pull it off.

"So what if he is more of a Bengali-speaking Calcutta-based corporate juggler? He has his roots in Uttar Pradesh, doesn't he?" argued Mulayam, when others in the party objected to Amar Singh's being inducted from top.

Singh was given the number two slot in the party, where even older Mulayam associates like Communication Minister Beni Prasad Verma were never allowed to tread. Not only was he the general secretary, but Mulayam also made him the party's national spokesman -- after booting Dighe from the job!

Now, Mulayam is so obsessed with Amar Singh that the industrial-politician is omnipresent at every political fora with the SP supremo, and is referred to as "Thakur Amar Singh.'

Singh, for his part, does not lag behind in zooming across the length and breadth of the sprawling UP in Mulayam's defence aircraft to try his luck as the pied piper of the Thakurs.

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