By IANS,
New Delhi : The Samajwadi Party Saturday accused the Congress of insulting its leaders and warned the latter against creating further tension between the parties, which are ruling allies at the centre.
Party general secretary Amar Singh told reporters here that Congress leaders Digvijay Singh and Satyavrat Chaturvedi were violating the basic principles of a political alliance and had misbehaved with Samajwadi Party leaders, including president Mulayam Singh Yadav and himself.
He said Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had failed to keep their leaders in check.
Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh is a Congress general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh affairs, while Chaturvedi is a permanent invitee of the Congress Working Committee (CWC).
“Digvijay Singh called our party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav a corrupt person in the presence of Rahul Gandhi, Ram Gopal Yadav (the younger brother of Mulayam Singh Yadav) and some other Congress leaders,” Amar Singh alleged.
“Thanks to Rahul Gandhi, who intervened and got Digvijay Singh to apologise,” he claimed, but added that such conduct was not good for the future of their alliance.
The Samajwadi Party leader said the party had so far put up with this behaviour “because we want to form a larger alliance of secular parties”.
“Some Congress leaders, including Digvijay Singh, are saying we are not a reliable ally. How can they say this?” Amar Singh asked.
“We supported the government in the July 22 trust vote and got the India-US nuke deal finalised. We gave unconditional support, we refused a seat in the (union) cabinet which was offered to us,” he said.
“Moreover, I, Amar Singh, became an accused in the cash for votes scam. We swallowed all this humiliation for the existence of a secular government at the centre.”
He said he feared that the way Samajwadi Party legislators were poached in Madhya Pradesh by Digvijay Singh might be repeated in Uttar Pradesh as well.
“I want to ask if Digvijay Singh is going to repeat his politics of poaching Samajwadi legislators in Uttar Pradesh the way he did in Madhya Pradesh,” Amar Singh said.