Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) is all set to roll into a significant position in Kerala’s coalition politics from mid-July. And, one of the two men pulling the SP wagon into Kerala will be Abdul Nassar Mahdani, the man who was in jail for nine years as a prime accused in the 1998 Coimbatore serial blasts that killed 58 and maimed over 200, before the court finally let him off for want of enough evidence.

Mahdani chairs the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which he had formed after its earlier and more virulent form, the Islamic Sevak Sangh (ISS), was banned. PDP sources told The Indian Express today that Mahdani will formally merge his outfit by next week with the SP, after he returns from a West Asian tour. A senior Mahdani aide, however, said the PDP had also been weighing the option of “collaborating closely” with the SP without a formal merger.

Mahdani, who has had 32 cases of communal incitement charged against him, has been claiming a very close proximity to Mulayam, both before and after the Coimbatore blasts. He had met Mulayam twice in his office while he was Defence Minister, he had told The Indian Express, and had campaigned for the SP during the UP Assembly elections.

Mahdani’s PDP, which had risen to fill the vacuum caused by the eroding base of a steadily weakening Muslim League in Kerala, had changed focus to broadbasing the PDP into a Dalit-Muslim-Backwards platform on an anti-Brahminical and anti-upper caste premise.

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