Aditya Sinha: SP family feud is Amit Shah's gain

An SP supporter sets himself ablaze outside UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's residence to protest his expulsion from the party on Friday. Pic/PTI

BJP chief Amit Shah must be smiling. It's 2017 and his plans are falling into place. His aim is to win the coming UP Assembly election. He needs to do so not just to prove that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's demonetisation gambit was correct, and not just to have a ISRO-type launch pad for the 2019 general election so that Modi can win the second of his planned-for three terms in office, but also so that the BJP have enough legislative votes to elect their own choice for President of India this July (disregard all speculation at this point; the RSS wants its own man in Rashtrapati Bhawan). He got a huge boost this weekend with the drama tearing apart the Samajwadi Party, led by Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh.

The TV news on Sunday was a roller-coaster of developments centering around this Oedipal battle. Just two days earlier, the father had thrown the son (as well as his own cousin Ram Gopal) out of the party; it was a development worthy of a banana republic. The reason was power. Mulayam and younger brother Shivpal control the SP and have a list of candidates for the coming election. Akhilesh, who in his five-year tenure has broken away from the party's image of criminality, nepotism and general backwardness (and whose highly photogenic wife Dimple doesn't harm his youthful, progressive image), has his own list of candidates, some of whom don't overlap with his dad's and chacha's.

The actual struggle for power appears to be between Akhilesh and Mulayam's two Sasikalas. One of the culprits is Amar Singh, referred to in UP as Kans mama (the wicked uncle of the most famous Yadav in Indian mythology, Lord Krishna; we all know what end he met with). Where there is trouble, there you will find Amar Singh. Despite his mischief potential (or perhaps because of it) he has many friends across the political spectrum; one of them is Amit Shah.

The other culprit is Mulayam's second wife, Sadhana Gupta. Though their son Prateek was born in 1988, he married her only after Akhilesh's mother, Malti Devi, passed away in 2003. As any TV addict or Ramayana enthusiast can guess, she is ambitious for her son. Akhilesh is obviously no Lord Rama in his attitude towards his step-mother. Why does Mulayam listen to her? It is said that when Mulayam was struggling with cancer a few years back (the UPA was still in power) and was in a renowned private hospital, CM Akhilesh did not come to visit him even once. Perhaps it was because Sadhana was taking care of his father. In any case, the lack of filial piety sticks in Mulayam's mind. Thus what Sadhana says, goes.

Once Akhilesh was thrown out of the party, saner heads tried to amicably resolve the matter. Father and son had a face-to-face on Saturday, and given that most of the incumbent legislators backed Akhilesh, Mulayam revoked the expulsions. It appeared that Akhilesh had won. On Sunday Akhilesh decided to do to his Dad what Modi did to BJP gerontocrat LK Advani: neuter him by making him a marg darshak. The son declared himself party chief so as to tighten his grip on the party machinery, and in turn threw Amar Singh out of the party. The father then retaliated by ousting Akhilesh's confidante Ram Gopal, and called for a party convention on Thursday, where matters would ostensibly be thrashed out.

You'd think this messy family feud would have Mayawati sitting pretty, but of late she appears to be less confident than she was, say, on January 1, 2016. At that time, many believed she would be a shoo-in as the next UP chief minister. It appeared that she had a rock-solid combination of Dalit and Muslim voters that would propel her to a majority in the Assembly election. Whether it is the surgical strike or the demonetisation drive (and the revelation that her brother had over a hundred crore rupees in old currency that he changed), she has lost some of her lustre. And before the family feud erupted, reports from UP said that the Muslim vote was not a given for Mayawati.

Amit Shah's game plan for the coming state election was to cleave not just the Dalit vote and not just the Muslim vote, but also the non-Yadav OBC vote. The current father-son feud is serving his purpose with regard to the last two objectives. And for the pièce de résistance, he is looking forward to the budget presentation a month from now, when "the biggest tax reform since independence", as finance minister Arun Jaitley put it, is announced. That sounds like the abolition of income tax. If so, it would be a happy 2017 indeed for Amit Shah.

Senior journalist Aditya Sinha is a contributor to the recently published anthology House Spirit: Drinking in India. He tweets @autumnshade. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com