Bhopal, Sept. 16: Amar Singh is a heartbroken man.

New-found friend Congress, the Samajwadi leader says, has “betrayed” his party by poaching four rebel legislators.

“Bewafai,” said Mulayam Singh Yadav’s right-hand man, a tinge of pain in his voice as he yesterday accused Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Suresh Pachauri of betrayal.

Observers, however, wondered whether it was just “thodi si bewafai” (minor betrayal) or a sign of deeper distrust that could jeopardise the alliance between the two since the Samajwadi Party helped the Congress survive the July trust vote in Parliament.

Amar, on an election tour to Shahdol, Madhya Pradesh, yesterday ruled out the possibility of a Congress-Samajwadi tie-up during the state polls scheduled for November.

“(The) Congress party has betrayed us by engineering the defection of four MLAs of our party. They have not only broken my party, but also my heart,” Amar said.

The Samajwadi general secretary, however, did not target top Congress leaders and said he still hoped that AICC chief Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul would keep the alliance intact.

“We don’t have any complaint against Sonia or Rahul, but leaders of Madhya Pradesh roaming around them have cheated us,” Amar said. In other words, the split was limited to the state.

At present, seat-sharing talks between the two for the coming Lok Sabha polls, particularly for Uttar Pradesh, are delicately poised. In Amar’s scheme of things, an alliance in Uttar Pradesh should have stretched to neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, where the two could have got together to check the ruling BJP. But the Congress prefers to go it alone in Madhya Pradesh.

Earlier this month, Samajwadi MLAs Arjun Palia, Vanshmani Prasad Verma, Vikram Singh Natiraja and K.K. Singh quit their party. Yesterday, at an AICC meet in New Delhi, their names were said to have found favour as Congress nominees in the coming Assembly polls.

It was perhaps a coincidence that when the Congress was clearing the names of the Samajwadi quartet in Delhi, Amar was trying to motivate his party’s rank and file in eastern Madhya Pradesh.

State Samajwadi chief Narain Tripathi gently reminded him of the Congress’s “betrayal”, which he claimed was posing problems in projecting their party as a credible and potent force in the state.

In 2003, Amar’s party had eight legislators in the 230-member Assembly. The number has now been reduced to four.

Pachauri was not available for comment but former chief minister Digvijay Singh, another target of Amar’s barbs, rejected the Samajwadi leader’s allegation of engineering defections.

The Congress leader said the four rebels left their party of their own free will.