While Union minister and Congress leader Beni Prasad Verma continues to breathe fire against the Samajwadi Party, it appears that the two parties are playing out their respective strategies for the next Lok Sabha elections.
SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav appears to have gauged that the Congress would be his principal foe in the Lok Sabha elections, unlike the Assembly polls in which he had to slug it out with the Mayawati-led BSP.
“The slugfest of claims and counter-claims between Mr Verma and SP leaders is all about politics. We are heading for a national poll and hence the rivals will be different than those in the Assembly elections,” said a senior SP leader.
The Congress had stunned political pundits in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls by winning 21 constituencies when the SP in its talks for a pre-poll alliance had offered the grand old party not more than 18 seats. “The SP will have to fight the national parties, the Congress and BJP, in the LS elections, so it has to shed its image of an UPA ally as soon as possible. The unabating slugfest over the issue of Mr Verma is part of a larger game plan,” added the SP leader.
While Mr Verma had proved to be a liability for the Congress in last year’s Assembly elections, he, along with dalit leader P.L. Puniya, had weaved magic for the party in eastern UP by stitching up a Dalit-Kurmi caste consolidation in 2009. The SP leaders maintain that a below-the-mark performance by the Akhilesh-Yadav-led state government would put the party on the backfoot in the run-up to the LS polls and hence the party would have to go all out against the Congress.
Mr Verma, meanwhile, continued to attack the SP chief. Amidst reports that he may be dropped from the Union Cabinet, Mr Verma told reporters in Lucknow he was “ready to face anything to set Mulayam Singh Yadav right and expose his true colours”.