Kalyan Singh (right) with son Rajveer in Lucknow on Sunday. Picture by Naeem Ansari

Nov. 15: Kalyan Singh today ended his ties with Mulayam Singh Yadav and hinted at a return to the BJP, some of whose leaders believe he can help the party rebuild its backward caste vote bank in Uttar Pradesh.

Although often dismissed as a spent force, the 76-year-old former BJP chief minister can still make a difference in 16 of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats thanks to his Lodh-Rajput vote base. Of the 23 seats the Samajwadi Party won in the Lok Sabha polls, Lodh-Rajput votes delivered at least seven.

It was with an eye on this vote bank that Mulayam had tied up with the man who was chief minister when the Babri Masjid was demolished, before publicly distancing himself from Kalyan yesterday to try and win back his dwindling Muslim support.

Kalyan pulled son Rajveer out of the Samajwadi Party today and launch a tirade against Mulayam’s “political treachery”.

“The BJP is the party where I belong and my options are open,” he said in Lucknow when asked if he would rejoin his former party.

He then stressed his Hindutva credentials: “I will re-join a nationalist party… it (the BJP) is the only nationalist party that can strengthen Hinduism and build a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya.”

Sections within the RSS and BJP see in this an opportunity to revive the party in Uttar Pradesh.

Although the state BJP brass, including party chief Rajnath Singh and Kalraj Mishra, are opposed to yet another re-induction of Kalyan — he had quit and come back once before — a Sangh source said: “It is again time to set aside ego clashes and look at the larger picture.”

The pro-Kalyan lobby in the RSS and BJP argues that because Mulayam has dumped him to “appease” Muslims, his Hindutva credentials remain intact.

“We observed that during the joint (Lok Sabha poll) campaign with Mulayam, he never once apologised for the Babri demolition. He may have expressed some regret but that’s not the same thing,” a source said.

A return by Kalyan will also help address the BJP’s fears that its long-fractured backward caste votes are now steadily gravitating towards the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Through the 1990s, the backward castes formed the BJP’s spine in Uttar Pradesh even as the Thakurs gave it muscle, the Banias money and the Brahmins “intellectual credibility”, a source said.

The Banias then briefly flirted with the BSP and are now looking at the Congress as an option; and there is every sign that the Brahmins are “returning” to the Congress.

BJP sources said unless they could convince the Brahmins of the party’s “winning potential”, the caste was not likely to support it in the near future.

“The Brahmins returned to the Congress once they were sure that the Muslims too were back with the party. We need to put together a solid base again to attract the Brahmins. This is why Kalyan is important… to pull some of the OBCs towards us,” a BJP leader explained.

Unlike the Congress, the BJP has nurtured an Other Backward Classes leadership in north India in the post-Mandal era — from Narendra Modi and Gopinath Munde in the west to Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Sushil Modi in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.

In Uttar Pradesh, however, the party’s OBC faces like Vinay Katiyar and Om Prakash Singh were unable to fill the vacuum left by Kalyan.

In Madhya Pradesh, Uma Bharti, also a Lodh-Rajput, has sent feelers to the BJP to take her back.