COLLATERAL DAMAGE

National friendship on the one side, local turf-sharing on the other. It seems the twain shall not meet for INDIA bloc partners Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress.

- Prashant Srivastava

In the Opposition’s collective fight against the BJP, if you thought these two ‘secular’ parties were natural allies, rest assured that’s a shaky hypothesis yet to be conclusively proven in Uttar Pradesh. And now they’ve found a new stage on which to display their sibling petulance: ties have taken a bitter turn after SP chief Akhilesh Yadav alleged that the Congress had reneged on its seat-sharing promise for the Madhya Pradesh assembly poll despite assurances by the top leadership.

“They made our leaders wait till 1 am but did not give us a seat. I want to tell the Congress, don’t talk about our party through your chirkut (idiot) leaders,” Akhilesh thundered on October 19. The chirkut barb was meant for new UP Congress chief Ajay Rai, who had weighed in earlier, saying the SP should “be patient and support” the Congress in MP. “They [SP] should see what the situation is in each state…and anyway, they only had one MLA and he joined the BJP,” Rai had reckoned.