New Delhi, July 25: With the election campaign for Uttar Pradesh sounded, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav on Sunday dubbed Congress as a bigger evil for minorities than BJP, betraying concern that he saw the ‘secular rival’ as a threat to his Muslim votebase and raising possibility of disturbances in the upcoming Parliament session.
The SP chief launched a broadside against Congress for adopting “anti-Muslim policies”, counting the many riots like Moradabad that took place under Congress governments.
Mulayam demanded the arrest of Mumbai cops involved in the interrogation of Faiz Usmani, who died in custody after being picked up for questioning over the Mumbai blasts.
The statement was politically intriguing given that his calling the BJP “lesser evil” for minorities came on the day Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi was sacked as vice-chancellor of Deoband seminary for praising Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.
“Whenever BJP has ruled, Muslims have not been exploited… despite a couple of communal riots, their exploitation has been less,” Mulayam said. When asked if his logic meant Gujarat riots was a small issue, he clarified that he was only talking about UP.
The attack on Congress, though unexpected on a Sunday morning with issues of corruption dominating the discourse, is clearly aimed at putting the rival on the defensive over Muslim issue. The SP hopes of revival in 2012 polls centre around Muslim votes which have formed the core of its votebase. The minorities deserted the party in good numbers in the BSP wave in 2007.
Congress dismissed Mulayam’s statement as an attempt to “create issues”, with minority affairs minister Salman Khurshid seeing a design in it. He said the SP chief praised BJP whenever he was in trouble but asked how anyone could forget the Gujarat riots.
The 2012 polls have complicated the minority question in UP. Though BSP has not given much reason to Muslims to be angry beyond the routine anti-incumbency any government suffers, SP is worried that Rahul Gandhi’s charge for Congress could dent its base. On Rahul’s efforts in UP, Mulayam said, “He is young, let him try.”
The repeat mandate for UPA in 2009 carried evidence of one-way minority vote for Congress. That it forms the most potent pole against BJP at the Centre can only appeal to the community.
According to observers, Mulayam is looking to raise the minority pitch with emotive issues. The first signs of the strategy came after the Allahabad High Court verdict on Ayodhya land dispute. While Congress used it to renew its call for negotiated settlement, the Yadav chieftain called it injustice to Muslims. The BJP-lesser-evil-than-Congress formulation seems a step in that direction.
Mulayam reasoned his claim by saying that ruling BJP could not exploit minorities for fear of Samajwadis while Congress was too arrogant to care for its protests.
-Agencies