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Support to UPA does not mean capitulation, warns Amar Singh

Photo: Subir Roy

A Samajwadi Party worker seeks blessing from party president Mulayam Singh at a Kushwaha rally in Lucknow on Thursday.

LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh on Thursday lashed out at the Congress and said the support extended by his party to the UPA Government at the Centre did not mean capitulation.

His diatribe against the Congress placed a question mark over the fate of seat-sharing talks between the two parties ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha polls. Two rounds of talks have already been held between the leaders of the two parties.

While the UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were spared, the Samajwadi leader was particularly severe on Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil, Congress general secretary in charge of UP affairs Digvijay Singh and Ahmed Patel.

Addressing the Kushwaha-Maurya rally at the Charbagh Railway Stadium here in the presence of Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh, Mr. Amar Singh said these Congress leaders had failed to reciprocate the support extended by his party.

He reposed his faith in Ms. Gandhi and Dr. Singh, but said he has no faith in the Union Home Minister.

Referring to the terror tag associated with his home district of Azamgarh, the SP leader slammed the intelligence and police agencies for describing it as a nursery of terrorism. He said Azamgarh was the land of Kaifi Azmi and leaders like Chandrajit Yadav. He dismissed the attempts of the authorities to tarnish the name of his home district and announced that henceforth he would call himself Amar Singh ‘Azmi’.

In his address to the rally, former UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh kept mum about the Congress but attacked Chief Minister Mayawati by describing her as the biggest land mafia in the country.

He said a deliberate attempt was being by the present regime to target the Samajwadi workers and leaders.

Mr. Mulayam Singh counselled the well-placed backward castes to ensure welfare of the most backward castes like Kushwahas and Mauryas. The Samajwadi Party chief added that the advanced BCs should act as big brother to their less fortunate brethren.

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