Cornered SP battles for survival,Mulayam talks tough in LS

The outburst of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday provides a pointer to the party’s future game plan.

The SP chief was particularly peeved over the recent observation of AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi in Amethi,that for the Congress,both the Samajwadi Party and BSP were the same.

“How can both the SP and BSP be the same for the Congress? We saved the UPA government during the crucial trust vote last year,while the BSP had voted against the government. Yeh beimani aur dhokhadhari hai (This is dishonesty),” said the SP chief.

“Can the DMK and AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and Trinamool Congress and CPM in West Bengal be equated with each other? So how can the SP and BSP be the same?” he added.

“Whenever somebody has supported Congress,they have ditched them. They have a history of this,” Yadav said in the Lok Sabha.

“You wouldn’t have been here but for us. Times are not always the same,” he said.

Reminding the ruling party that it survived the trust vote in the Lok Sabha a year ago because of SP support,Yadav said his party was forced to go with the Congress because of the “communal” attitude of the BJP.

“If you improve yourselves,” he told the BJP,“we will take back support,” he said.

Party leaders say the SP finds itself in a fix because despite supporting the Central government,it is not getting any benefit from it.

Further,as the political battle between the Congress and the BSP gets sharper,the SP finds itself being pushed by the Congress out of the opposition space in Uttar Pradesh.

As Yadav said,“Today,we are neither in the government nor in the opposition.”

The party’s national general secretary Mohan Singh said: “The Congress is testing our tolerance level by equating us with the BSP. We will decide on convening a meeting of the national executive of the party as soon as Amar Singh returns from Singapore.”

A senior SP leader admitted that no purpose was being served by extending unsolicited support to the UPA government.

“We committed a mistake by rejecting an alliance with the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections. By supporting the UPA government at the Centre without they even asking for it,we are only compounding it,” he added.