Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav has declared that his party is not open to any alliances and would opt only for mergers, if needed. Mulayam Singh Yadav’s announcement, coming after a series of meetings with Lalu Prasad Yadav, Sharad Yadav, Ajit Singh and Prashant Kishor, is not entirely surprising. For those who know and understand the politician Mulayam, there was always a sense of scepticism in his recent show of bonhomie towards other political leaders.
The silver jubilee function of the Samajwadi Party, earlier this month, was touted by the media as a showcase of Janata Parivar unity, but closer home, party insiders said that the Janata show was designed to deflect media attention from the bickering within the party and the family. It is another matter that the event became a battleground of war of words against Shivpal Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav. RLD president Ajit Singh, one of the guests at the silver jubilee function, perhaps, understood the plan when he said in his speech that “An alliance is possible only if Mulayam Singh shows some large-heartedness.”
The SP has always been averse to an alliance with the Congress mainly because it now holds sway over vote banks that originally belonged to the Congress, particularly Muslims. Mulayam Singh Yadav knows that if he could forge an alliance with the Congress in the past two decades, a reverse trend could take place if he now allies with the Congress. “The whole talk of alliances was floated to give Muslims an impression of secular forces joining hands so that they could remain with SP. We always knew that Mulayam Singh would not join hands and that is the main reason why Nitish Kumar stayed away from the Lucknow function”, said a JD(U) leader.
Moreover, as Shivpal Yadav supporter said, “If the party was not serious about alliance, why was Shivpal to Delhi to invite these leaders and initiate alliance talks? It is a loss of face for Shivpal who has already been treated shabbily by Akhilesh Yadav.”
The RLD was given the offer of merging with the Samajwadi Party. Earlier, in June, there was talk of an SP-RLD alliance, which got scuttled because Mulayam Singh Yadav insisted on a merger. When Ajit Singh refused to merge his party, the induction of his son Jayant Chaudhary as a minister in the Akhilesh government was put off. “Ajit Singh will never commit political suicide by merging his party with the SP. The RLD may be a small party, but we have our own area of influence and also the legacy of Chaudhary Charan Singh, which has been claimed by Mulayam Singh Yadav several times,” said an RLD leader in Lucknow.