JOIN USCong 'rushed' Food Bill to secure votes: Mulayam
Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose party has been extending outside support to the UPA government, on Friday accused the Congress of “rushing” the Food Security Bill to secure votes.
Speaking to reporters here, Mulayam said that his party would take a decision on the Bill after studying it.
“Whenever the elections approach, the Congress does something like this...the party knows that it will be defeated in Uttar Pradesh but it hopes to secure votes elsewhere,” the SP supremo said charging the congress with looking the other way when people were “starving to death”. He referred to the alleged starvation deaths in Maharashtra and said that despite his appeal the government did not distribute the food grains among the farmers there. “It is nothing but vote politics,” he added.
Terming the Food Security Bill as “anti-farmer”, Mulayam said that the bill should have been brought after deliberations in Parliament and not through an ordinance. He also said that his party would make sure the bill did not harm the interests of the farmers.
The SP leader refused to comment on the remarks on him by his former colleague and Union minister Beni Prasad Verma. “He has been a colleague and it is good that he is discussing me in whatever ways-positive or negative,” Mulayam said in reply to a query.
He, however, advised his former colleague to “learn decorum”.
Verma had threatened to quit after he had been reprimanded by the congress for his verbal attacks on Mulayam on several occasions.