New yaari-dosti: What are Mulayam and Amar Singh up to?

Who stands to benefit more out of the visibly-possible renewed relationship between Samajwadi Party Chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh?

Sharat Pradhan / Rediff.com decodes the mystery.

Sharing of Samajwadi Party dais by a thoroughly-discredited Amar Singh at a function in Lucknow on Tuesday followed by a closed door secret meeting with SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav later that evening, raised many eyebrows.

It has also given rise to speculation about the alleged wheeler-dealer-turned-politician’s return to the Samajwadi Party fold from where he was expelled four years ago.

With much bad blood spilled around by Amar Singh over these four years -- when he did not miss a single opportunity to spew venom at the entire Yadav clan -- any rapprochement was unthinkable.

However, Tuesday’s developments are increasingly giving credence to oft-echoed rumours about the re-entry of Amar Singh in the party.

The topic of discussion and debate in the corridors of power is about “who benefits more out of this visibly-possible renewed relationship -- Mulayam or Amar?”

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Going by Amar Singh’s track record of the past four years, it is more than vivid that he has been desperately looking for a turf to anchor his dangling political boat.

There is no political party in Uttar Pradesh and even outside where he did not seek to get entry.

Be it the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Bhartiya Janata Party, the Nationalist Congress Party or even the Trinamol Congress, Amar Singh has knocked every door but for one reason or the other even his lobbyists in these parties could not help him to fulfil his desire.

He did form his own political party, but that was merely namesake and therefore remains only for the benefit of letter-heads.

The desperation eventually compelled him to fall into the lap of Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal, which did not hesitate to give him as well as his political protege, filmstar-turned-politician Jaya Prada tickets for the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

Both lost miserably.

Sure enough both Amar Singh and Jaya knew that their foray into RLD would not give them anything beyond a political tag.

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With his Rajya Sabha term coming to close in November this year, Amar Singh has naturally become more desperate. And political observers see that as the key factor in driving him back to the Mulayam fold.

Speculation is that even though Amar Singh has been claiming that he got a call from Mulayam to extend a personal invitation for inauguration of the 367- acre Janeshwar Misra Park, it was the former who made the initial call to SP chief.

Facing stiff opposition from within his family, Mulayam refrained from extending the usual warmth to him at the dais where the seating arrangement too ensured sufficient distance between the two.

Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav too limited himself to only exchanging pleasantries with his one-time “Amar chacha”.

The only member of the Yadav family with whom some bonhomie was visible on the stage was Shivpal Yadav, the powerful Public Works Department and Irrigation minister, beside whom Amar Singh found a seat.

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Amar Singh remains a persona non grata with Mulayam’s cousin and party’s most influential national general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav, who apart from being the party’s leader in Rajya Sabha was also known to be wielding Akhilesh’s remote control.

No wonder therefore, Ram Gopal kept himself away from Tuesday’s function citing preoccupations in the Rajya Sabha as reason for his absence.

Another powerful SP leader and the party’s key Muslim face, Azam Khan also cannot see eye-to-eye with Amar Singh, who has never left any stone unturned to run the former down.

Like Ram Gopal, he too declined to join the show.

And if Ram Gopal dismissed anxious queries about Amar Singh by terming him as “one of the 10,000 persons at the event”, Azam urged the media, “not to give undue importance to someone like Amar Singh”.

Both these leaders were responsible for showing Amar Singh the door of the party four years ago because they felt that he had managed to even overpower Mulayam and call the shots in the party.

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Extremely media savvy, Amar made it a point to remain the main face of the party and systematically projected himself as Mulayam’s man for all seasons, sidelining everybody including the SP chief’s two powerful brothers and son.

Sure enough, there is bound to be much resistance to his return in the party where everyone close to Mulayam apprehends a repeat of the past.

Perhaps that was the reason that while Mulayam avoided even mentioning Amar Singh’s name in his address at Tuesday’s function, he agreed to remain closeted with him in the VVIP lounge of the Lucknow airport later that evening when they flew together to Delhi without the media glare.

Mulayam, who usually flies by the state aircraft, preferred a routine Jet Airways flight on which the seating arrangement showed the two sitting side by side -- on Seats 1A and 1B.

Surely, there’s much more happening than what meets the eye.

Amar Singh’s desperation to get a fresh Rajya Sabha term as a SP nominee was understandable as that status is required by him to keep him off many hooks. But why Mulayam is taking such keen interest in him is a million dollar question.

After all, Mulayam is no novice in politics. And if he is playing his cards, it cannot be an exercise in futility. There has to be some quid pro quo.