Will he be third time lucky?

As the political drama unfolds in Uttar Pradesh over the next two weeks, Sunday Times assesses the developments.
Eight years is a long time. In politics, where friends, priorities and ideologies change every season, eight years could be a whole millennium. So, the large glamour quotient at Mulayam Singh Yadav’s swearing-in-ceremony in Lucknow was perhaps not so out of place after all.The swish set that made his special moment look like a sizzling page-3 event might have discomfited yesteryear’s Maulana Mulayam. But Mulayam’s 2003 avatar, one must remember, is a post-Amar Singh phenomenon. And where there is Amar Singh, there must be "my dear brother Amitabh (as in Bachchan) and my dear friend Anil (as in Ambani)," not to forget their accompanying bandwagon of wives, children, friends and business associates.
From social backwardness to socialite connections, it has been long journey for Mulayam. The
irony is Mulayam was once proud of his social disadvantage. Indeed, his social disadvantage was his political advantage. It earned him iconic following among the OBCs and Muslims. Mulayam’s politics of identity was a statement against the upper caste-upper class establishment. The ‘90s Mulayam was the iron man who defined mandal and defended the masjid.
Mandalite Mulayam overthrew entrenched caste orders and rewrote UP’s political history. He combined with Mayawati to forge a Dalit-OBC alliance so mesmeric, so powerful that it had the underclass applauding the event as the dawn of a new era. Similarly, Maulana Mulayam swore to protect the Babri masjid with his life and he did. His ringing challenge to the sangh parivar was: Masjid par ek parinda bhi par nahi maar sakta (I’ll ensure even a bird doesn’t fly across Babri masjid)
Amar Singh’s Mulayam could be everything that the Mandalite-Maulana version rebelled against. Why, some might even complain that Amar Singh’s Mulayam was hardly to be seen. Indeed, in recent years, it is Mulayam’s genial lieutenant who has been the public face of the Samjawadi Party. From wooing Sonia Gandhi to arranging surreptitious meetings with ‘friends’ in the BJP to courting advantageous business interests to gracing glitterati dos, it is Amar Singh who has done what needed to be done. That the exertions had paid off handsomely was evident from the veritable who’s who gathered at the swearing-in ceremony: Mulayam’s new friends included not just luminaries from the business and glamour worlds but, perhaps more importantly, his once bitter enemies in the BJP.