The media went all ballistic to report expulsion of Amar Singh, the vintage "dealer", from the Samajwadi Party. All the top honchos of the media a beeline at the doorsteps of Mr Singh, popularly called by his loyalists as Thakur Sahab, to get "exclusive byte" from him. Mr Singh, though accused in general to be the deal maker on the strength of his erstwhile party in the Lok Sabha, has been a drawing room politician and famously known for giving juicy bytes to the media. This author has spent long hours to catch his trivial bytes from the time he emerged as the saviours of the Congress led UPA government, which could have sunk in 2008 over the Indo-US nuclear deal.
In politics the obvious and the stated versions may not necessarily be true. So, a caution must be there for those interested in politics. Also, Mr Amar Singh is known for his theatrics and histrionics. He can stage drama and later on can even disown his acts. There is nothing wrong when people damn it by saying that "Politics is the last refuge of the scoundrels". For just an afterthought: Is he staging a drama in collusion with his master Mulayam Singh Yadav to save the party which has sunk too deep that no immediate revival of its fortune could be seen, that he could go into the camp of arch-rival Mayawati to destroy her politically (as he did with Mulayam!). Just an afterthought!!!
Why is Mr Amar Singh, the wheeler-dealer of Indian politics, so important for the media? The answer is that he symbolises the very character of Indian democracy, which since the time of Mr V. P. Singh in 1989, has been dependent on people like him to function. It will be quite a travesty of justice if a person like K Chandrsekhara Rao, famousely called KCR, emerges as the father of new Telangana state in Andhra Pradesh. However, such a travesty can not be ruled out, as Shibu Soren has finally succeeded in becoming the chief minister of Jharkhand. Was not his party men involved in taking suitcase of currency from the representatives of the government led by Late Prime Minister Narsimha Rao, again to save his government from sinking in the Lok Sabha. The list of such travesty is simply too long.
The son of Mulayam, who is an MP, Akhilesh had told this author that his party would go for restructuring in the month of January, after a series of poll debacle having dented the confidence of his followers. The party, which had banked on MY (Muslim-Yadav) support to survive had seen the whole minority flock deserting it in the recent times. Mr Singh's expulsion could give an elbow room to Mulayam to undo his mistakes by opening the door for leaders like Azam Khan, Salim Sherwani, Shahid Siddiqui and many more. Not a bad trade off for stars from Bollywood who were brought into the party by Amar Singh in the end one can say.
Amar Singh had told this author once that Mulayam used to ask him what benefit does his party get by his talking to the Delhi media all the times. Amar Singh could also have said what benefit does the party get from him. Finance could have been a possible answer if this question was asked. But Mulayam had to bear with the loss of his daughter-in-law Dimple or rather his izzat (honour) at the hands of bitter rival Raj Babbar at Firozabad, with Akhilesh never tiring to explain that the loss was because he could not match the money power of Mr Babbar. If this is true, then Amar Singh has to take the blame, as he is alleged to have poured in his money power to ensure the victory of Jaya Prada fom the Rampur Lok Sabha constituency last year.
Where does the UP politics, which is most interesting for any political pundit to watch for, heads now. It must be stated here that Mulayam is going to be much more stronger than what he is today after the weeding out of Amar Singh elements from the party, which could be a bad news for Rahul Gandhi, who is toiling hard to win the cow-belt.
