Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has dismissed the forays of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav into Uttar Pradesh as “old tricks of the BJP”.
“These are old practices, which are never successful. The Bharatiya Janata Party think-tank is planning political moves as per the chess; our ‘vazir’ (queen) is also ready. The Yadav Mahakumbh was a mere pre-election drama,” Akhilesh Yadav said here on Monday.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav was in Lucknow on Sunday. This was his second visit to UP.  He said that the Yadav community had freed itself from the contractual system of vote bank politics practised by one particular family in Uttar Pradesh and was now fully behind the development vision of the BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi.
“‘It was believed that only one family was the contractor for the community and its vote, but I am happy that it (Yadav community) has left that contractual system. Now the community has its own identity,” Mohan Yadav had said, hinting at the SP led by Akhilesh Yadav, while addressing the Yadav Mahakumbh.
Replying to a question about the recent notice of the Central Bureau of Investigation to him regarding the mining scam, the SP chief said, “I am ready to cooperate with the CBI and reply to all questions to be asked by the investigating agency.”
He, however, added that the BJP was misusing the central investigating agencies to harass its political rivals.
Akhilesh Yadav alleged that the industrialists had donated to the BJP through electoral bonds as these business houses were the beneficiaries of loan waiver by the Central government. He alleged that loans worth Rs 15 lakh crore of business houses were waived and this facility had not been extended to the farmers.
The SP chief said the farmers were still agitating and demanding legal guarantee and loan waiver and were sitting on Punjab-Haryana border.
Meanwhile, amidst announcements by some sitting BJP MPs and a couple of candidates not to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday took a jibe at the ruling party, saying that the “BJP was never so weak as a party”.
In a post on X in Hindi, Yadav said, “Who would have thought that such days would come for the BJP that some candidates will give up their claim on the pretext that some other work is more important before getting the ticket.”
“Someone will talk about going out considering sports as more serious than politics. Someone will write an application to get out of the deciduous BJP on the pretext of environment, while someone will announce his retirement after getting a ticket. And even after getting a ticket, someone will reject the ticket from a distance on social media due to personal reasons,” he said.
He added, “BJP was never so weak as a party. Now apart from the public, even the BJP people themselves are saying, ‘Don’t want BJP’.”
Several leaders of the Bahujan Samaj Party and other parties joined the Samajwadi Party on Monday. Rushdie Miyan, former SP MLA who had defected to the BSP, joined the SP. Former minister of state Shiv Kumar Beria of Kanpur also joined the SP.