Seeking to counter the Bharatiya Janata Party’s aggressive campaign over 2013 Muzaffarnagar communal riots and migration of Hindus from Kairana area, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav accused the saffron party of pursuing negative politics and trying to exploit the communal fault lines in Muzaffarnagar for meeting narrow political ends.
Countering the charge of migration of Hindus from Kairana during Samajwadi Party government in 2013, Akhilesh said, “This election will witness the political migration of the BJP from UP politics. Baba Mukhya Mantri ka palyaan ho gaya hai . Yogi Adityanath wanted to contest from Ayodhya and Mathura but the BJP packed him back to Gorakhpur.’’
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and Rashtriya Lok Dal president Jayant Chaudhary held a joint press conference in Muzaffarnagar on Friday and launched scathing attacks on the BJP ahead of the crucial UP assembly elections.
“Many people are raising questions if we are together. We would like to tell them that we are together and stronger. Only one leader has vision and experience and that is Akhilesh Yadav,” said RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary during the press conference.
Seeking to dispel the impression of being pro-Muslim alliance, Akhilesh said, “We both are sons of farmers. We have taken the pledge to fight for farmers till the end. The Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance will win a majority in the upcoming elections in the state. I always carry a packet in my pocket -- ‘laal topi and ‘laal potli’. I carry an ‘ann sankalp’ to defeat the BJP and make them run away.”
Attacking the BJP, Akhilesh said that it was time to end negative politics as the saffron party did not fulfill a single pre-2017 poll promise.
This was the first joint press conference of SP and RLD after the announcement of the UP assembly elections and came after Union Home Minister Amit Shah extended an invitation to Jayant Chaudhary to quit the alliance and join the BJP.
On Wednesday, Shah, while talking to Jat leaders, had said that the ideology of both the BJP and RLD and the community were the same as both kept national interests first and had been fighting against “invaders”.
The meeting held at the residence of BJP MP Parvesh Verma was also attended by BJP’s prominent Jat leaders, including Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan, an MP from Muzaffarnagar in west UP.
Meanwhile on Friday, Akhilesh Yadav alleged that he was stranded in Delhi airport as his helicopter was not being allowed to take off for Muzaffarnagar.
In a tweet in Hindi, the SP chief posted a picture with the helicopter in the background and said, "My helicopter is still detained in Delhi without assigning any reason and I am not being allowed to go to Muzaffarnagar, whereas a top BJP leader has just flown from here. This is a desperate conspiracy of the losing BJP."
