Rahul: Guest of honour

New Delhi, Aug. 26: Even a little while ago, it appeared as though they were at daggers drawn. Yesterday, however, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi decided to bury the hatchet — at least for a few hours.

No one from the Congress or the Samajwadi Party was willing to say what the imperatives were: protocol, a gesture of courtesy or the politics of coming together to fight the “communal” BJP.

But the first-time MP from Amethi was the undeclared guest of honour at a dinner hosted by the Uttar Pradesh chief minister at the Parliament library last night for all MPs from his state in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi did not show up because she was reportedly recuperating after a viral illness. And though Samajwadi Party secretary Amar Singh was back to Sonia-bashing, her son turned up under the protective wing of Rajya Sabha MP Rajiv Shukla.

Mulayam Singh was reportedly so thrilled when he saw Rahul that he invited him to take a place on the dais along with him, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, minister of state for home Sri Prakash Jaiswal, Janeshwar Mishra and other worthies. Rahul declined, saying he was much too junior to share a platform with the veterans.

Rahul, however, raised quite a few issues along with Shukla at a meeting that preceded the dinner. The two reportedly stressed that the Uttar Pradesh government would have to enhance its revenue generation from 17 per cent at present by adopting austerity measures for a start.

They also impressed upon Mulayam Singh the need to monitor percolation of central and state allocations for rural areas much more scrupulously as the estimate was that only 15 to 20 per cent of the funds was reaching villages.

Among the other points they made were increasing the generation capacity of existing power plants from 51 per cent to at least 75 per cent and speeding up work on the Prime Minister’s rural road project.

Congress MPs also expressed concern over the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh to which the chief minister said it was “improving”, otherwise investors would not have come with mega projects.

Mulayam Singh also announced that 10 villages in every parliamentary constituency would be electrified and 150 hand pumps installed.

While Congress sources emphasised that no political “meaning” should be read into Rahul’s presence, a Samajwadi Party MP said Mulayam Singh was merely reviving a tradition practised by former Congress chief ministers .D. Tiwari and the late Vir Bahadur Singh who hosted at least two such dinners every year. With the Congress out of power in Uttar Pradesh and the state in perpetual political flux since 1989, the tradition was forgotten.

Political observers said that adversarial politics of the kind ushered in by the BJP, Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party was another reason for putting bonhomie out of fashion. BSP MPs did not show up at Mulayam Singh’s dinner.