NDA wants UPA to prove its nos in Parliament

The opposition, NDA has demanded that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government immediately convene a session in Parliament and seek a vote of confidence to prove its majority.

LK Advani also accused the Congress of indulging in a trade-off with the Samajwadi Party for the government's survival. "In view of the present situation, my party demands that a session of Parliament be immediately convened and Dr Manmohan Singh seek the confidence of the House and move a vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha."

According to Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor-in-Chief, CNN-IBN, these are tough times ahead for the Samajwadi Party. Ever since it lost the election in Uttar Pradesh in May last year, it has found that its cadres have been gravitating away from it towards the Bahujan Samaj Party, because these are parties that work on the logic of power. They move towards whichever party is in power.

Now, Mulayam Singh's core vote has been the Muslim-Yadav base. The Congress' core vote, when it was the supreme party of UP was the Muslim, dalit, and brahmin vote bank. The Muslim vote is where there has been a competition between the Congress and SP. What happens to that Muslim vote in the next election? Mayawati also has her eye on that vote, which is why she cannot tie-up with the BJP. So, we will see fluid equations in UP.

The SP hopes that its vote bank and the Congress' vote bank is complementary. That is why they hope that they can do much better in the next election. There are as many as 80 seats for grab in UP. The logic was that Mayawati was in a position to grab at least half, if not 50 seats. Now, with Mulayam and Congress coming together possibly in an election alliance, with maybe the Congress contesting 25 seats and SP contesting the rest, one could have a situation where these two parties pose some kind of a threat to Mayawati's hold over UP.

That is the scenario towards which a section of the Congress is working. In the short-term, it could benefit both the SP and the Congress. But in the long-term, can these two groups get together after the antagonisms of the last 10 years. It is a tough choice and really the SP and the Congress are caught between a rock and a hard place. Eventually, it seems to have decided to go along with each other. But it is not an easy option at the moment for the SP or Congress to go in for an election alliance.