Mulayam Says Azam Khan’s Tirade Unfair
Caught in the tweezers in the midst of, perhaps, his most crucial election campaign till date, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh, on Friday said that senior party leader Azam Khan’s tirade against party colleague Amar Singh and former UP chief minister Kalyan Singh was “unfair.”
“He (Khan) has been continuously speaking against Amar Singh and also Kalyan Singh. His tirade against both is unfair,” the SP chief was reported as saying during an interview to a television channel.
“Being the general secretary of the party, whatever complaints he (Khan) had, could have been discussed by holding a working committee meeting. The way he has been airing his grievances to the media is not good. I consider it bad,” he added.
Meanwhile, Azam Khan, long considered the Muslim face of the SP, continued to wage verbal battles against Amar Singh, he alleged that that the latter’s reference to him at an election rally in state capital, Lucknow on Thursday was laced with threats against him.
“Amar Singh threatened that he would become the third eye of Lord Shiva and destroy me. It clearly indicates his ill will… as it could either be my political destruction or physical one or both,” Khan was quoted as saying by PTI.
“Use of such a derogatory and undignified language in politics also suggests that whatever he is aiming for is below the belt,” said Khan while iterating that he saw a clear threat to him and his family in Amar Singh’s speech.
Khan, who recently returned to political arc lights, further blamed the high-profile SP general secretary of choosing the BJP-dominated Shahabad tehsil to instigate the majority community against him.
He claimed that there has been an influx of unsavory elements in Rampur over the last few days and claimed that the visitors could vitiate the atmosphere in the constituency by luring local youth into “wrong deeds,” before calling on the district administration to initiate stern measures against the visitors.
Khan’s home turf – Rampur is said to be the proverbial bone of contention in the widening feud in the party, as Amar Singh was instrumental in yet again managing to wrest the SP parliamentary nomination for his protégé former film actress Jaya Prada, much to Khan’s displeasure.
Khan recently returned to the political thick by kicking up a storm over Mulayam Singh’s growing proximity with former BJP leader Kalyan Singh, who the Muslims blame for the 1992 demolition of the Babri structure at Ayodhya and the communal violence that followed.
Babri demolition was one of the factors contributing to the meteoric rise of the SP, as the party rode to power on an anti-Congress, anti-BJP wave in minority Muslims.
