That is also why he has suddenly reverted to the familiar anti-Congressism of yore, saying that people want neither the BJP nor the Congress. It is a different matter that until recently, the Samajwadi Party leader had been imploring the Congress to take the initiative to bring down the BJP government and provide an alternative. While Mulayam Singh would have welcomed an insecure Congress dependent on other political formations to buttress a broad anti-BJP front, he has several reasons to fear a confident Congress more than willing to go it alone.

Uttar Pradesh, that great heartland of Indian politics, could prove the futurebattleground for the votaries of the secular vote. First there was the Congress victory in the biennial elections to the State Legislative Council. Then came the recent Agra assembly poll, where the fight was clearly between the BJP and the Congress -- the Samajwadi Party candidate having lost his deposit. What's more, though the BJP won there ultimately, the votes polled by the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party together were more than that polled by the Hindutva party.

While it would be premature to project these trends on a state-wide basis, given the dismal state of the Congress organisation in UP, it does indicate the fate that awaits the Samajwadi Party, should its hitherto captive Muslim vote shift to the Congress, now headed by Salman Khurshid in the state. In contrast, Bihar is very much Laloo Prasad Yadav country for the moment at least. The Rashtriya Janata Dal recorded impressive wins in Adapur, Sheohar, and Koderma and helped the CPI(M) win Purnea. But in Bihar, too, Congress revival canonly be at the expense of Laloo Yadav's suzerainty.

It is against this background that Monday's tensions between the Congress and the two Yadav parties must be viewed. The Congress clearly didn't want to squander its new-found credibility by playing ball with the Yadavs and lending support to the two adjournments against the BJP that the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha introduced in the Lok Sabha.

In fact, there were occasions when the exchanges between Mulayam Singh Yadav and Congress MPs assumed a distinct hostile tinge. But the Samajwadi Party leader could not have been surprised at the Congress' lukewarm response to its agenda. After all, the Congress Parliamentary Party executive had clearly stated that the party ``would independently talk about its own ideology irrespective of what other friendly parties are saying''.

So while the Yadavs are viewed as ``friends'' as opposed to the ``enemy'' -- the BJP -- there is little doubt that Congress ambitions make a future alliance between them difficult. Thetruth is that the Congress juggernaut, if and when it starts moving, threatens to ride roughshod over any aspirations to power that the parties comprising the Third Front may harbour. That is their dilemma.