May 10, 1999

Why did Mulayam say no to the Congress?
Amar Singh and the audience Sonia didn't grant him. The midnight call that Kamal Nath received but shouldn't have. The error of trying to paint Mulayam into a corner. A battleground called Uttar Pradesh and a vote bank to be guarded. How the children of Lohia outwitted the children of Marx.

There is a quaint tale that Congress MP Kamal Nath is fond of repeating. Early on April 23 morning, his cell phone rang. "Amar Singhji," asked the caller, "is everything okay?" It was obviously a wrong number but Nath was inquisitive. He checked the caller's number to discover the cell phone of parliamentary affairs minister Kumaramangalam. "I called 10 Janpath that very moment," adds Nath.

As he should have. If everything had gone according to plan, Sonia would have presented her letters of support to the President on the evening of April 23 and been sworn in as prime minister the next day. The party was spoilt from an unexpected quarter. Defying conventional wisdom and resisting all pressures, Mulayam Singh Yadav informed Narayanan that his 20 MPs would not support a Congress government.

Why did Mulayam refuse to bend even at the risk of being called a "secular impostor" by Arjun and the "BJP's lapdog" by Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Salman Khurshid? The SP's answer is charmingly simple: we were never consulted nor asked. It's literally a half-truth. "We never committed our support," says Amar Singh. "Nobody spoke to us about an alternative government led by the Congress." Not even Sonia when she met Mulayam at 10 Janpath on April 20. "We were treated as commodities," adds Rajya Sabha leader Ram Gopal Yadav. Amar Singh has his own grievance too. "I sought an appointment with the Congress president but wasn't granted one." By contrast, Vajpayee had the courtesy to telephone him.

It's a question of perceptions. Sonia was led to believe that tackling Mulayam was the job of Laloo, his Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha (RLM) partner, and Surjeet, with whom he enjoyed a special relationship. It was the wrong advice. Already nursing a grievance against the Congress for trying to poach on his Muslim base in Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam wanted an excuse to hit back. The set-up at 10 Janpath gave him ample ammunition and Surjeet compounded the offence by trying to isolate him from Laloo. It brought out the wrestler in Mulayam. "The choice before us was political suicide or struggle."

It was a choice that was nudged by the likes of former prime minister Chandra Shekhar who sat in a non-Congress meeting convened by Mulayam on April 21 expressly to bait Surjeet. It was also a direction mapped by Samata Party leaders George Fernandes and Digvijay Singh who still dream of assembling all good Lohiaites under one roof. But ultimately it was a choice made on the basis of hard calculations that even old friends like Madhavrao Scindia and Ali Mian couldn't influence.

The SP is the BJP's foremost rival in Uttar Pradesh with a vote share of 28 per cent in 1998. It won 20 Lok Sabha seats and suffered a marginal defeat in another 39. It couldn't stomach the Congress donning the "secular" mantle and stealing its carefully nurtured Muslim support. Mulayam played the BJP game incidentally. With conceit and counter-arrogance, he defined his own self-interest. Mulayam knows he can't win this round. He just wants to live to fight another day.

Why did the BJP-led government lose?
Why did Mayawati switch at the last minute?
Why did Sonia claim support of 272 MPs?
Why did the Congress veto Jyoti Basu?
Why was Vajpayee not invited again?

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