Is Amar Singh’s Return A Sign Of Mulayam’s New-Found Confidence?

Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Yadav is using Rajya Sabha elections to assert his hold over the party as it gets ready to face Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh early next year. By nominating Amar Singh, the SP chief is sending a strong message to Azam Khan to hold his tongue and behave. Amar Singh and Azam Khan are not known to be the best of friends.

But it is difficult to pin down Azam Khan who has already expressed his disappointment at Mulayam’s decision to nominate Singh to the Rajya Sabha. ‘Unfortunate’ is how Azam Khan described the whole thing and added that: “as far as I think, this whole incident (nomination of Amar Singh to Rajya Sabha) is unfortunate”.

“Netaji malik hai aur malik ke faisle ko chunauti dena mere adhikar chetra ke bahar hai (Mulayam Singh is the party chief and to challenge his decision is beyond my rights),” this Hindustan Times report quoted Azam as saying.

Mulayam can afford to ignore loud-mouth Azam Khan as the BJP is likely to approach the assembly elections in UP with an aggressive stance. The decline of Congress party and the polarised campaigning of the BJP will push Muslim voters towards Mulayam. This would mean advantage Mulayam and he can reset his party’s dependence on characters like Azam Khan.

On Tuesday, May 17, the SP announced the names of seven party candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections slated to be held in June. The list included, amongst others, Amar Singh’s name. Aside from Amar Singh, the other nominees were Beni Prasad Verma, who returned to the SP after a stint in the Congress; Sanjay Seth, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, Sukhram Yadav, Revti Raman Singh, and, Arvind Singh.

Singh was expelled from the party for six years in February 2010. Ever since his expulsion period concluded earlier this year, there have been speculations of his return to the party.

There were speculations of Amar Singh’s return to the SP since the beginning of the year. This was because Singh had been expelled from the SP for six years in 2010 and 2016 marks the end of that period.

Meanwhile, Yogi Adityanath took the opportunity to call the SP a ‘sinking ship’, as per this report in Rediff. He went on to say that it was is good that all those destined to sink would sink together: “SP doobta hua jahaz hai, accha hai saare doobne waale log ek saath aakar doobein.