As the contest for the Presidential polls begins to heat up, it is a beleaguered SP that finds itself isolated, even dumped by its once close ally the CPI(M). CPI(M)’s politburo member Sitaram Yechury today asked the Congress to “elicit” support of the newly installed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BSP President Mayawati for the Congress-led UPA’s consensual candidate.

Yechury’s statement could not have come at a worse time for SP President Mulayam Singh Yadav who is barely recovering from a humiliating defeat at the hands of the BSP. The CPI(M) has already made its choice clear for the winning number, which could have come from either the BSP or the SP.

The CPI(M)’s statement came after a series of talks between the party and the Congress-led UPA Government. CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat had met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, when the latter presented the names of three probable candidates. Then Yechury met Congress President Sonia Gandhi for further talks and yesterday, the Left parties sat together to pick their choice of “a suitable candidate”. Union External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee emerged as the front-runner.

There were hints of a growing distance between the CPI(M) and the SP during the UP polls. If other constituents of the Left like the CPI and Forward Bloc refused to have an alliance with the SP, even joining hands with SP’s rivals like the Jan Morcha, the CPI(M) did not make its stand clear with the SP either. The SP may have taken some comfort in the fact that the CPI(M) had fiercely resisted the imposition of President’s Rule in UP by the Congress-led Centre, but it is now stunned to discover the Left party has ideas contrary to its plans for the Presidential polls. Sources say the powerful duo of Karat and Yechury were adamant that President A P J Abdul Kalam, mooted by the SP first, should not get a second term and that Vice-President Bhairon Singh

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