Congress sets out to woo SP, Mulayam in no hurry
Friday March 16, 2012 09:36:41 AM,
Mohit Dubey, IANS
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Lucknow: Thursday
saw the political stock of Mulayam Singh Yadav soaring once again.
On one hand while the wrestler-turned-politician got his son Akhilesh Yadav sworn in as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, on
the other he had the Congress party wooing him like never before.
With Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta
Banerjee breathing fire on the hike in passenger fares in the rail
budget presented by Union Railways Minister Dinesh Trivedi and the
strength of the UPA II in the Lok Sabha appearing on the edge,
Congress left nothing to imagination vis a vis its "wannabe
relationship with the SP in the coming days."
And the effort to woo the Samajwadi Party was evident in the fact
that Congress party treasurer and Gandhi family loyalist Moti Lal
Vora led a delegation of senior Congress leaders to the swearing
in ceremony of Yadav junior. It was however the presence of
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal that made the
political vulnerability of Congress in the Lok Sabha quite
obvious.
"It is not every day that in middle of a parliament session the
union parliamentary affairs minister skips the day's affairs and
flies off out of the union capital to partake in the swearing in
ceremony of a government of a party its leadership was cursing
till recently," observed a close aide of Mulayam Singh.
That Mulayam Singh Yadav could emerge an axis to efforts to revive
the Third Front was not lost on Congress leadership was also
evident by the fact that UPA Chairperson and Congress president
Sonia Gandhi sent a personal letter to Yadav informing that it was
her ill health that she could not make it to Lucknow for this
"momentous event".
A senior Congress leader on condition of anonymity told IANS that
"in the changed situation the party was favourably disposed
towards the Yadav duo and looked for a quid pro quo too."
"The calculation is simple," pointed out a state Congress leader
who added how the party leadership had realised that its hopes of
a comeback in Uttar Pradesh had gone up in smoke with the poor
faring in the recently concluded assembly elections and that time
had come for a tacit or inclusive arrangement with the Samajwadi
Party.
Insiders in the SP camp admit that "feelers had come to Neta ji"
to join the UPA and that Congress has made it clear that it would
"walk the extra mile and do whatever it takes" to "get the Yadav
on board."
When asked of rumours doing the rounds that the SP could join the
UPA government, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said that "all such
decisions were left to Neta ji and he would be the best to answer
such queries."
Mulayam Singh Yadav on his part told IANS that he was till now in
the "thick of UP political activity" and had "nothing else in
mind."
"Abhi to dekh hi rahe ho ye sab chal raha hai (hinting at the
hectic and prolonged assembly campaigning and then government
formation), thoda susta lein phir aur cheezon pe charcha hogi"
(You are seeing I am so busy with UP all this while, let me take
some time off, then we will discuss), Yadav told IANS.
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Minister for Railways Dinesh Trivedi interacting with the
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