Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh on Monday took exception to Rahul Gandhi’s unannounced visit on Sunday to relief camps for the Muzaffarnagar communal riot victims. Without naming the Congress vice-president, Mr. Singh said that by visiting the camps at Shamli without prior information, the Congress had made an attempt to create an election issue. There was a conspiracy to mislead people, the SP leader alleged.
Referring to the relief and rehabilitation measures taken by the SP regime, Mr. Singh said no other government in the past had done so much for riot victims. The victims of the communal riots during the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party regimes had failed to get justice, he claimed, speaking at a meeting held here to mark the 111th birth anniversary of the former Prime Minister, Chaudhary Charan Singh.
Mr. Singh dubbed the Congress, the BJP and the BSP conspirators, which, he alleged, were lending support to communal forces. Reiterating that a Third Front government would be formed at the Centre in 2014, he said the SP would play a decisive role in the exercise.
Turning inward, the SP chief warned partymen that their involvement in acts of hooliganism would lead to their expulsion, even if the perpetrators were the kin of ministers or party functionaries.
Mr. Singh was reacting to an incident involving the son of Animal Husbandry Minister and SP candidate from Jaunpur, Paras Nath Yadav.
While drawing a line between party discipline and goondaism, Mr. Singh lauded the BJP, which, he said, “won the recent Assembly elections [in the Hindi heartland] because its workers did not indulge in hooliganism.”
Significantly, it was the first time a function to remember the late Jat leader was held at the SP headquarters, with Mr. Singh being the chief speaker at a farmers’ seminar.
