03 May 2004	Monday	12 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

LUCKNOW, May 2: King maker, leader, spoiler and stooge - Mulayam Singh Yadav, regional strongman and chief minister of India's heartland state of Uttar Pradesh, has been called different names by his friends and rivals.

But there is little disagreement that this diminutive wrestler-turned-politician is the most sought after leader in a tightening election race in the world's largest democracy.

Yadav has been pitch forked into the centre of the battle for power in New Delhi, ahead of the final stages of voting on Wednesday and May 10 in a staggered national election.

Both the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition and the opposition Congress and its allies are forecast to fall short of the halfway mark of 273 seats needed to form a government from the 545-member parliament.

Yadav's centre-left Samajwadi party, expected to win 25-30 parliament seats from its bastions in Uttar Pradesh, could then decide who rules the country of one billion people. But he is not about to reveal which way he would go.

"Till the other day, all our rivals were abusing us," Yadav told an election rally in Uttar Pradesh's capital Lucknow. "Now they say we are the key to power in Delhi." "All I can tell you now is that in the current environment, we will shape the political destiny of the country," said Yadav, dressed in a long white shirt and a white sarong.

The Samajwadi Party, whose support base consists of farmers, lower Hindu castes and Muslims, has traditionally opposed the BJP, seen as biased against India's minority Muslims.

Though Yadav and the BJP have come close to each other in the last six months, any public indication that he planned to support the ruling Hindu nationalists could drive Muslims away from the Samajwadi Party, hurting it in the polls, analysts say.

TOUGH CHOICE

On the other hand, though Yadav depends on Congress support to run his state government, he refused a pre-poll alliance with Congress as that would ruin any chance of joining hands with the BJP after the elections, analysts said.

Now, in a bid to convince voters that he is his own man, Yadav has suggested reviving a ragtag third front consisting of regional, centre-left parties which ruled India in 1996-98 and had Yadav as defence minister.

Analysts said this was his way of posturing to become leader of a third coalition and the prime minister, an ambition he has nursed for years. But Yadav disagrees. "I am not in the race for the job (of prime minister)," he told local TV news channels during the weekend. "But I want my party to have a say in the formation of the new government."

His supporters, however, believe Yadav is at the doorstep of the top job. Across villages and towns in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state with nearly 170 million people, hundreds of supporters ride bicycles - the Samajwadi Party symbol - to his rallies, ringing bells and shouting "Mulayam Singh Yadav's turn has come."

"The day is not far when he will occupy the prime minister's chair," Reoti Raman Singh, a Samajwadi Party candidate from Allahabad city tells supporters. -Reuters