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Mulayam moving closer to BJP: UP Congress chief

Uttar Pradesh Congress unit president and former Union minister Salman Kursheed has said Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav's statement that the ''Congress is his number one enemy'' showed the latter was apparently moving close to the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Talking to UNI in Hyderabad, Kursheed said Yadav was apparently rattled by the outcome of the recent assembly by-election from Agra where his party's candidate lost his deposit.

Yadav had realised that the minorities were moving away from the Samajwadi Party as they felt that it was only the Congress which could take on the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.

The Congress had not only made up the deficit of 35,000 votes in the Agra assembly segment during the last Lok Sabha polls but had climbed to the second position and had lost by just 4,000 votes to the BJP in the by-election.

The impact of the recent assembly elections in the northern states was also being felt in Uttar Pradesh as the minorities had realised that the euphoria generated by Yadav was only a mirage as he had not done anything to protect them.

Kursheed said the Congress was preparing to go it alone in Uttar Pradesh by building up its cadres at the grassroots level. There were already encouraging signs with a number of backward class leaders like former Union minister Rampoojan Patel and dalit leader A P Gautam joining the party in the recent times. He, however, maintained that the party cadres were against the re-entry of the Loktantrik Congress, an ally of the ruling BJP in the state.

He claimed that the BJP was ''cracking up'' in Uttar Pradesh because of the infighting between the ''brahmin'' lobby and Chief Minister Kalyan Singh''. There is a major gulf in the BJP ever since the gunning down of Brahma Dutt Trivedi whose wife is a minister in the Kalyan Singh ministry, he said.

On his party's stand on the inclusion of Udham Singh Nagar in the proposed Uttarkhand state, Kursheed blamed the BJP for trying to divert attention by raking up the issue of including Hardwar in the new state. The original resolution of the Uttar Pradesh assembly was twisted by the BJP, he said.

''Our stand is that any new proposal relating to the inclusion of Hardwar should first come to the Uttar Pradesh assembly,'' he added.

UNI

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