Will Samajwadi Party support UPA on nuke deal?

Top leaders of the United National Progressive Alliance, better known as the Third Front, met in the capital to finalise their strategy on the nuclear deal. Choosing to dispel rumours of a split in the UNPA, Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh said the alliance remained united, but also indicated that an alliance between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress is not ruled out. Meanwhile, the UNPA leaders made it clear that they were not satisfied with the Prime Minister's reply on the nuclear deal.

The SP is trying to get into a friendly equation with the Congress and they don’t want to give the impression that they are very keen to get into a power sharing agreement with them.

Earlier in the day, the SP claimed that they would wish to get all the clarifications that have been offered to them by the PMO and NSA corroborated by an independent, new nuclear scientist - former President APJ Abdul Kalam. He is also someone who belongs to the minority community.

SPs gameplan of meeting Kalam is to counter these allegations made by the likes of MK Pandey of the CPM or the UP CM Mayawati who have said that this is a deal that is against minority. So, by meeting Kalam, they have killed two birds with one stone.

They have dispelled the notion that since he is a former President, why should he not be thinking in terms of national interest and, this argument that has been leveled that this is an anti-minority deal.

Therefore the SP has moved one inch closer to the Congress party even today.

The scientific fraternity is simply split down the middle when it comes to the question of deciding whether the nuclear deal is good or bad. Depending on which camp of the nuclear scientists that the SP goes to, it can get a favourable response.

What we are witnessing right now is a game of wait and watch from both sides - the Congress as well as the SP. We are talking of an equation that is now turning into a friendly one between two parties who have been at loggerheads with each other for the last 10 years. In 1998, Mulayam Singh Yadav did not allow Sonia Gandhi to become the Prime Minister because of her foreign origins. What has changed now?