Amar's devious divide-UP plan

For Singh division of UP is a small price to pay for revenge against Mulayam

ajay

Ajay Singh | February 5, 2010


Amar Singh, the wily thakur
Amar Singh, the wily thakur

Even before he was expelled from the Samajwadi Party (SP), Amar Singh set the ball rolling for his future course of action. He is working on the adage that “enemy's enemy is a friend” and co-opting dissidents with the SP. He is goading a few influential leaders in eastern UP to float a political platform to raise the demand for separate statehood for the region.

There have been political lobbies in eastern UP consistently raising the demand for a separate state but the movement has not gathered critical mass. The logic of the demand emanates from the state planning commission's allocation of money to eastern UP as a separate administrative unit. The budget allots funds to the three distinct administrative units __ eastern UP, West UP and Bundelkhand. Eastern UP has always felt that governments have been stingy with the region while pouring resources into the western region.

One strong votary of statehood for eastern UP is Shatruddhprakash who was part of the Mulayam Singh cabinet in the latter's first term as chief minister. Prakash has been nursing a grudge against Yadav for marginalising him in the state politics. Prakash is a leader in his own right in Varanasi and has become the focal point for the yearning for statehood. Just after his resignation from all posts, Amar made a quick dash to Varanasi and sought help from Prakash and other votaries of statehood. Though he may have made some progress, there is serious skepticism about giving away the platform to Amar whose credibility quotient is quite low.

Amar made a simultaneous attempt to rope in jat leader Ajit Singh's support to raise the pitch for carving out western UP into Harit Pradesh. Ajit's readiness to play ball with Amar is directly related to his pathological aversion to Mulayam. Ajit feels Mulayam stole his father's political legacy from him. Given Ajit Singh's support base among dominant jats in western UP, an Amar-Ajit axis can prove to be an strong platform. Similarly in Bundelklhand, Raja Bundela, a bollywood discard but popular in the region, has been leading a movement for separate Bundelkhand. Given Rahul Gandhi's focus on the economic and social backwardness of the region, Bundela's platform has emerged as credible alternative to mainstream political parties.

If all these three states are created, Mulayam Singh's influence will be limited to a small pocket and he will be reduced to irrelevance on the national stage. Clearly Amar Singh's future political course seems to be in perfect alignment with Mayawati's. The UP chief minister has already proposed division of the state for exactly the same reason. Whether Amar Singh will gain or not is a question for later, but there is no doubt that he will do his worst to hurt Mulayam. Division of UP is a small price to pay for settling scores with his latest political rival.
 

Comments

 

Other News

Is BharatNet digging too deep?

India’s ambition to become a digitally empowered society rests on the premise that every citizen, regardless of geography, should have access to reliable and affordable internet. At the heart of this mission is BharatNet, a flagship programme launched by the government of India to provide high-speed

WAVES Summit: A Global Media Powerhouse

In 2019, at the inauguration of National Museum of Indian Cinema, prime minister Narendra Modi had expressed his wish to have a forum of global repute similar to the World Economic Forum, Davos, for India’s media and entertainment (M&E) industry. That wish became reality with the WAVES Summit in

India’s silent lead crisis

Flint, Michigan, was a wake-up call. Lead contamination in water supplied to homes in that American city led to a catastrophic public health emergency in 2014, which is yet to be fully resolved. But India’s lead poisoning crisis is ten times worse- larger, quieter, and far most devastating. Nearly ha

‘Dial 100’: A tribute to the police force and its unsung heroes

Dial 100  By Kulpreet Yadav HarperCollins, 232 pages, Rs 299  A wife conspires with her ex-lover to mur

India’s economic duality: formal dreams, informal realities

“Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true.” – Joan Robinson In its pursuit of becoming a $5 trillion economy, India has laid significant emphasis on formalizing its economic architecture—expanding digital payments, mandating

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now





Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter