National

Amar, Sigh...

It may not be official yet, but the signs are everywhere: Amar Singh is eclipsed

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Amar, Sigh...
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Look for that trademark Amar Singh swagger and bravado and you find it vaguely absent. In the flitting focus of Delhi’s strobe lights which can separate the has-beens from the arrived, Amar Singh appears, at least for the moment, to have rapidly receded into the former. With the UPA in power in Delhi, he now has to operate in a "hostile" environment. In Uttar Pradesh, it’s chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav’s family that calls the shots, his activities have been severely curtailed. The CM’s younger brother, Shivpal Singh Yadav, now holds sway over the day-to-day administration. The CM’s son, Akhilesh Yadav, the articulate young MP from Kannauj, is being groomed for a bigger role. Cousin and Rajya Sabha MP Ramgopal Yadav continues to hold his own. And Shivpal and Akhilesh make no secret of their dislike for Amar Singh in party circles.

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"I don’t throw parties anymore, I don’t attend parties and I don’t meet journalists at home," says Amar Singh, uncharacteristically downbeat. Is it because he’s no longer No. 2 in the SP? "That’s just Congress propaganda. In the SP, there is only one No. 1, no No. 2, 3, 4 or 5. Everyone is given the opportunity to perform and outperform the others. Mulayam Singhji is the umbrella." Then why do Akhilesh and Shivpal not like him? "That’s not true," he says. "Akhilesh touches my feet; Shivpal gives me a great deal of respect."

But the signs are all there. Amar Singh’s altered status in Delhi coincided with the UPA’s ascent: it robbed him of his key utility. The changes within the state were more gradual. In 2002, the SP emerged as the single largest party but failed to secure a majority. At that time, it was Shivpal who played a key role in mobilising MLAs, something, a senior party functionary says, could not have been done just with money. This success catapulted Shivpal to centrestage and gave him a larger role in administrative affairs and in crucial transfers and postings. An IAS officer close to the CM says, "Mulayam Singh was sure he would play a key role in central politics after the general elections and so he had been grooming Shivpal for the CM’s job. But that was not to be. So even though Shivpal did not become CM, he retained his importance."

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Ask Amar Singh himself whether his equations with Mulayam Singh have changed and he denies it. "I know a Hindi newspaper ran an article saying I had fallen out with Mulayam Singhji because a UP state government ad carried only his photograph and an Uttar Pradesh Development Council (UPDC) ad carried only mine. But the UPDC is only an advisory body and has no budget—it can’t afford to advertise—the ad was inserted by the government. Mulayam Singh was infuriated by the allegations." A senior party leader says the government spends no money on the UPDC—Amar Singh is the chairman—and that the ad was put in at the latter’s own expense. A UP cadre IAS officer close to Mulayam sees the ad as a definite sign of strain between the two.

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By all accounts, Amar Singh’s ambit of activity in UP is now reduced to chairing the UPDC, which had kicked off on a high-profile note with members like industrialists Anil Ambani, Subroto Roy, Kumarmangalam Birla and Adi Godrej, and Amitabh Bachchan as brand ambassador. Party sources stress that Amar Singh, though still a member of the parliamentary board, has virtually no say in the political management of the SP.Says a key party functionary: "Amar Singh has no say in political strategy or choice of candidates." He didn’t succeed in installing his candidate Ravi Mathur as state chief secretary.The Yadav clan foiled his effort, Nira Yadav was appointed instead.He also failed to prevent Mohammad Mustafa—who during Mayawati’s chief ministership arrested the notorious Raja Bhaiyya—from being appointed district magistrate of Rampur, where Amar Singh’s protege, actress Jayaprada, is MP. Adding insult to injury was the fact that Mustafa’s patron was his bete noire, local MLA and powerful minister, Mohammad Azam Khan.

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What is Mulayam’s take on the issue? If the advent of the UPA turned Amar Singh’s world topsy-turvy, it also made Mulayam vulnerable. Instead of playing kingmaker in Delhi as he had hoped, he had to cope with a hostile central government, not helped by his closeness to Amar Singh. So while he has increased the role of other party figures, he can’t afford to alienate Amar Singh either, privy as he is to all aspects of his life for well over a decade. The UP CM sounded distinctly on the edge while speaking on the phone from Lucknow: "Amar Singh joined the SP not because of politics but because he is like my younger brother. Maine usko sab kaam saunp diya hai. Look at all the work he does—he brought Clinton, the Taj Mahotsav, the UPDC." Why does the CM’s family not like him then? Mulayam laughs nervously, "That’s not true. Shivpal and Akhilesh touch Amar Singh’s feet." And plans on his successor? The 64-year-old CM retorts, "Why, have I grown so old? I can run faster than any young man." But as an SP leader explains it, "Given the fact that a party like ours is seen to represent certain social sections, no upper-caste person can aspire to the top job."

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So, the Thakur face of the SP can still be seen standing beside Mulayam at all photo-ops—be it the much-hyped visit of Bill Clinton to Lucknow or the recent Taj Mahotsav in Agra. But when it comes to the grassroots level, it’s a different story.

Must all good things then come to an end? Amar Singh so far has had a fruitful run. Through the ’90s, he came to epitomise what economic liberalisation had done to politics in this country. He did the unthinkable, bringing a heady whiff of corporate India and tantalising Bollywood into the midst of those who swore by Lohia and khadi. There was both resentment and resistance from those who had spent a lifetime in the party. But then he had Mulayam by his side. As general secretary, Amar Singh soon became the public face of the party, juggling his dual role as Mulayam’s chief confidant with that of a Page 3 regular, rubbing shoulders with industrialists and socialites.

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And if his position in the SP gave him legitimacy, his friends in business and cinema a profile, the external environment—politically—too was congenial. He had the late Madhavrao Scindia’s friendship to flaunt during P.V. Narasimha Rao’s years as PM. The United Front’s stint in power saw him as often in the defence ministry, where Mulayam Singh was minister, as in thePMO because of his proximity to the then PM, H.D. Deve Gowda. And during the BJP-led NDA’s reign in Delhi, his closeness to former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee’s foster son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya and a senior minister ensured that he was seen as wielding clout in Delhi.

All that came to a grinding halt with the UPA’s assumption of power. The first signal came from Congress president Sonia Gandhi. She made it more than clear that he was an unwelcome guest when he arrived with former CPI(M) general secretary H.K.S. Surjeet at her residence for the first coalition-building meeting after the UPA came to power. Amar Singh made it worse for himself by publicising his "humiliation", as he did a few months later when Delhi’s elite Sanskriti School withdrew the admission it had given to his twin daughters.Infuriated, he vowed to take revenge, but to little purpose. As a senior civil servant puts it, "Delhi is a cruel city—instead of evoking sympathy, the incident just underlined the fact that Amar Singh had lost his clout."

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