Poster row: SP asks supporters not to compare party leaders with national icons

Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party (SP) urged its supporters and workers on Thursday not to draw comparisons between its leaders and national icons, a day after a controversial poster was put up outside its office here, featuring the split faces of party chief Akhilesh Yadav and B R Ambedkar.

A political storm erupted in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday over the controversial poster.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati took veiled potshots at Yadav, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) staged sit-ins and protests against the poster.

The SP has since dissociated itself from the poster, but the controversy has refused to die down, with rival parties demanding an apology from Yadav.

While thanking its supporters for their affection and dedication, the SP expressed concern over the use of such imagery.

"We wholeheartedly thank all our supporters and party workers for their love, affection and commitment," the party said in a statement on X.

"However, we make a very sensitive appeal that no leader of any party should ever be compared to or equated with any divine and venerable personality in any context," it said, cautioning against creating or circulating any images, idols, songs or statements that suggest such comparisons.

"Divine personalities and great men are far above any comparison," it added.

Yadav also called for political restraint.

Addressing a press conference here along with SP worker Lalchand Gautam, who had created the poster, Yadav said he has advised Gautam to refrain from creating or sharing any such content in the future that could hurt people's sentiments.

"I have explained it to him that he must never again make or share anything that might offend anyone," he said.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister further questioned that whether the BJP could exercise the same control over its leaders and workers.

"We have already guided our workers, but can the BJP do the same? Can it ensure that its leaders do not behave disrespectfully towards Babasaheb Ambedkar or any other great personality?" he asked.

Yadav also pointed out that similar imagery involving BJP leaders had surfaced in the past, but the SP chose not to politicise those incidents.

"Their (BJP) leaders' pictures were also there, but we never made an issue out of it," he said.

Earlier, asked about the poster by reporters in Ballia, Yadav said he would ask Gautam not to create such posters involving great personalities in the future.

"Will the BJP ask their leader, who made comments against Ambedkar in Parliament?" the SP chief asked, in an apparent reference to Home Minister Amit Shah's remarks in Parliament.

Shah had said in Parliament that "it has become a fashion to take the name of Ambedkar. Had they (opposition) taken the name of god so many times, they would have secured a place in heaven".

The BJP has slammed the SP, the main opposition party in Uttar Pradesh, for "insulting" Ambedkar, a Dalit icon and one of the key architects of the Constitution.

The BSP, too, has threatened to take to the streets if Ambedkar is "insulted".

Meanwhile, the SC-ST panel in Uttar Pradesh has written to the police commissioner here, urging him to lodge a case against the SP's Lohia Vahini under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act over the poster.

Uttar Pradesh SC-ST Commission chief Baijnath Rawat told PTI that he has taken suo-motu cognisance of the controversial poster.

The SP's Lohia wing has "insulted" Ambedkar with the poster, he said.

"We have taken suo-motu cognisance of the poster and written to the Lucknow police commissioner to register a case against the guilty under the SC-ST Act and brief the commission about the developments on May 5," Rawat said.

"It is inconceivable for anyone to even think of equating Baba Saheb with any individual," he added.

Rawat said the BJP revers Ambedkar and it is evident from several government decisions as he spoke about how the saffron party ran a campaign to keep all Ambedkar statues and memorials clean since his birth anniversary on April 14.

The SP leadership has been trying to woo the Dalits, once considered loyal to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and competing with the BJP for the support of the Other Backward Classes (OBC), considered the mainstay of the saffron party's phenomenal electoral gains in Uttar Pradesh since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.