Samajwadi Party founder-chief Mulayam Singh Yadav is a regional leader of Uttar Pradesh, but chose Kolkata for his party’s recent national executive meeting in order to project himself as the next Prime Minister. He didn’t fight shy of openly expressing this aspiration. This is hardly prime ministerial conduct: no past PM has so blatantly articulated his naked ambition.
The trouble is that the present context does not permit the confecting of a four-wheel-drive political vehicle in the shape of a Third Front or third alternative in the run-up to the next general election, a machinery that does not fear campaigning vigorously and getting into the slush as it has enough power in its train to scramble back to the macadam. This is simply because there is no all-India formation that can notionally lead a clutch of regional parties or groups — a job typically done in the past by the Left parties.
So even as Mr Yadav said a few harsh things about the UPA-2 government that his party supports at the Centre, he also observed that the Third Front he would possibly lead as a Prime Minister can only be formed after the poll results come in. This is too funny for words. The Left, whose bastion is still Kolkata, and the Trinamul Congress — in the same city — would probably also be thinking this. All the tough words against the Centre are perhaps meant to leverage the Centre to release adequate funds for Uttar Pradesh, run by Mr Yadav’s son Akhilesh.