Continuing his tirade against the Congress, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav accused the former of weakening the fight against the BJP by spreading confusion. His response came after Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra reminded the SP and BSP chiefs that their common objective was to defeat the BJP.
“Earlier there used to be a lot of time, almost a year for fighting elections and campaigning. But at a time when elections are around the corner, your creating confusion weakens the fight against a common enemy, an enemy who is an expert in diverting people from core issues,” Akhilesh said in Lucknow on Tuesday.
The SP-BSP alliance has been at loggerheads with the Congress ever since they announced their tie-up on January 12, leaving only Amethi and Rae Bareli for the grand old party.
The situation aggravated after the Congress returned the favour on March 17 and announced that it would not field candidates on seven seats to be contested by important leaders of the SP and BSP.
Mayawati dismissed the Congress offer saying that the alliance was competent to defeat the BJP on its own and they did not need the help of the Congress. “It is really difficult to say how much the Priyanka factor will work in Uttar Pradesh. The Congress might have a separate strategy for defeating the BJP, but their candidate selection tells a different story,” said Akhilesh. The former UP CM also hit out at the BJP saying that merely prefixing ‘chowkidar’ to party leaders’ Twitter handles would not yield political dividends for the ruling party.
“The BJP has done absolutely nothing in the past five years. When you call yourself a ‘chowkidar’ then you should also work like one. However, during the BJP regime, the work done has been contrary to what they claim. The meaning of Akhilesh is God of Gods. Will that make me one,” he quipped.
The SP chief’s remarks were directed at BJP leaders like Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Piyush Goyal, who prefixed ‘chowkidar’ to their names on Twitter on Sunday. Akhilesh also slammed the ruling party for weaving a narrative around the recent Pulwama attacks and the release of Wing Commander Abhinandan by Pakistan ‘for political gains’.
“It is unfortunate that so many soldiers were martyred, intelligence agencies failed, RDX was used in such a huge quantity, but the BJP is busy building a narrative out of it for political gains. The BJP government lathicharged former soldiers demanding ‘One rank, one pension’. They should tell what they have done for the Army personnel in the last five years,” the SP chief said.
