Post-Presidential election, tone and tenor of UP Congress leaders reflect that the divide between the Samajwadi party and the Congress is going.
And Union minister Beni Prasad Verma’s statement belittling Mulayam Singh Yadav has added fuel to the fire. Verma had said recently that Yadav will never become the prime minister.
Till recently, state congress leaders had been heaping praise on the young Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and even defending the alleged worsening law and order situation in the state.
Be it the deteriorating law and order or the reported attempt to revive the third front by Mulayam Singh, Congress leaders are now openly criticising the state government and ridiculing the leaders of Samajwadi Party.
Third front
“The third front experiment has failed and the people of the country know it...there is no alternative to the Congress and there is no other better claimant to the post of the prime minister than Rahul Gandhi,” says Congress leader Dwijendra Tripathi.
Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Reeta Bahuguna Joshi also made light of the idea of third front. “There is no way any third front can form the next government...I expect that all secular parties will support the Congress,” she said. Other senior leaders like Sriprakash Jaiswal and Salman Khursheed have also been unsparing in their attempts to corner SP on various issues confronting the people.
Local Congress leaders feel that by projecting Rahul as the party’s prime ministerial candidate and bringing in the Narendra Modi factor, Verma has made the job a lot easier for it, at least in the state.
“The Muslim votebank of the SP can be dented by projecting the Modi factor,” quipped a senior Congress leader.
State Congress leaders are also buoyed by the fact that Verma’s diatribe against Mulayam Singh has not been denounced by the senior leaders of the party.
SP leaders had sharply reacted to his remarks and even demanded his ouster from the Union Cabinet.