TRICKY TRADE: Mayawati outpolled the BJP, which outwitted her

A fair assessment indicated SP's sheer dependence on the Congress' 25 seats, but Sonia played roadblock.

On Tuesday, February 26, the Samajwadi Party (SP) headquarters in Lucknow was as packed and excitable as a half-victory would allow it to be. As newly elected MLAs trooped in and party workers and journalists huddled in conspiratorial corners, an air of underachievement hung over Mulayam Singh Yadav's army. The SP had ended up with 145 seats, still number one by a wide margin but 20-25 seats short of expectation.

At around 1.00 p.m., the MLAs duly elected Mulayam their leader. Accompanied by Amar Singh-the SP's general secretary and a sort of Kissinger to Mulayam's Nixon-the chief ministerial aspirant walked towards the lawn where the media had gathered. Since Mulayam couldn't announce his own election, he left the job to Amar Singh. The portly lieutenant fumbled, repeatedly confusing the proposers and seconders of Mulayam's nomination as legislature party leader. After three false starts, the Boss took Amar Singh aside, telling the journalists, "Pehle main inko samjhata hoon phir yeh aapko samjhayenge (First I will explain it to him, then he will explain it to you)."

The lesson worked and a relieved Amar Singh finally made the announcement. The comedy of errors was over. In many ways, though, it summed up the SP's poll 2002 predicament.

Six months ago, Mulayam had sought to inaugurate his campaign by getting all SP MLAs to resign from the (outgoing) state Assembly and demand immediate polls. Unfortunately, the day he chose for the protest was September 11. In the election itself, the SP focused on chief minister Rajnath Singh and the ruling BJP, only to be undercut by Madam Mayawati. As even Akhilesh Yadav, Mulayam's MP son, put it, "We never thought the BSP would get more than 70 seats, maybe 75."

UTTAR PRADESH: THE NUMBERS GAME Total Seats: 401*

*The analysis is for 401 seats out of 403 as results for 2 seats (Kunda and Bihar) are yet to be declared

The Bahujan Samaj Party finished just short of 100. It wrested 30 seats the SP had won in 1996. In the "Mulayam belt" towards the west of the state, the BSP took all three seats in Auraiya and one seat each in Etawah and Mainpuri. These were seats the SP "had taken for granted".

With Uttar Pradesh producing more a deadlocked Assembly than a hung one, government formation was rendered impossible. The SP did formally stake a claim before Governor Vishnu Kant Shastri, but asked for the spectacular period of one month to prove its majority on the floor of the House, citing a precedent from the 1960s and implying it would take the new MLAs a while to reach the state capital from far-flung constituencies.

The one-month manoeuvre was Mulayam buying time, almost literally. While Shastri pondered the SP letter, Lucknow was deluged by gossip. Two industrial houses had promised to back Mulayam's "mergers and acquisitions". The going rate was Rs 2 crore per MLA. Amar Singh had met some of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) MLAs-BJP ally Ajit Singh's party won 14 seats. Naresh Agarwal-legendary for his human resource management-was in talks with Ganga Bux Singh, who won on a BJP ticket but was, like Agarwal, once in the Loktantrik Congress. Agarwal had also met Congress bigwig Pramod Tiwari and agreed to a non-BJP, "secular" government.

Delightful as the stories may have been, they were beyond evidence. A more dispassionate assessment indicated Mulayam's sheer dependence on the Congress' 25 seats. He calculated that if the Congress agreed to back him, so would the Rashtriya Kranti Party-four seats, two to its president Kalyan Singh-the Apna Dal (three seats), sundry independents and Trojan horses in the BJP-led alliance would come over as well. There was always the helpful BSP-over a dozen of its MLAs are Muslim-to split.

CHANGE OF GUARD

Anti-incumbency ruled even at the candidate level. No party could retain even half the seats it won in 1996. The SP came close with 45 per cent.

Seat shares of parties after assembly election 1996 Total Seats: 403

*The analysis is for 401 seats out of 403 as results for 2 seats (Kunda and Bihar) are yet to be declared

A lady in Delhi played roadblock. Sonia Gandhi, Congress president, asked H.S. Surjeet, CPI(M) general secretary and Mulayam's advocate, "But where are the numbers?" Let him get to 175-odd seats, she said, the Congress would then chip in. As Mulayam tried to tell the cart from the horse, Mayawati virtually corralled her MLAs and drew plans to transport them to a safehouse in Punjab, away from Mulayam's charms.

Mayawati had been outwitted by the BJP decision to "respect the mandate"-the only respectable thing the Uttar Pradesh unit has done in a long time-sit in opposition and not attempt a tie-up with the BSP. Sharad Yadav's JD(U) and the RLD, both BJP partners, tried to persuade Vajpayee and company to seek a pact with Mayawati. Their efforts, as well as those of a section of the BJP itself, were thwarted.

Not that the BJP didn't have its own problems. On February 27 itself, Rajnath was re-elected leader of the legislature party at a meeting that was attended by merely 32 of the BJP's 88 new MLAs. Among those missing was Om Prakash Singh, the Kurmi/OBC veteran who was replaced by Kalraj Mishra as state unit president and overlooked when Rajnath became chief minister. Om Prakash immediately raised the banner of revolt against the Brahmin-Thakur domination-and ruination-of the BJP.

The Rajnath-Mishra combine first got together to ease out former chief minister and OBC stalwart Kalyan Singh from the BJP. The much discounted "Kalyan factor" damaged the BJP in 70 seats. As a senior MLA put it, "In the 265 km G.T. Road stretch from Kanpur Dehat to Aligarh, we have won only one seat."

The much-vaunted upper-caste base also cracked. Thakurs and Brahmins voted on caste rather than party lines. In Sarwankhera, Kanpur Dehat, Thakurs backed the BSP's Ram Swarup Singh, not the BJP. In Gorakhpur City the BJP's S.P. Shukla, a Brahmin, was undone by Thakurs who preferred the Hindu Mahasabha's Radha Mohan Agarwal.

For everybody in Uttar Pradesh, the poll was far from satisfactory. The BJP was left without a certain constituency, the SP without a certain government. The BSP was somewhere in the middle-and Uttar Pradesh in an almighty muddle.