By IANS,
Lucknow : All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Digvijay Singh Tuesday accused the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) of being hand-in-glove with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh.
“The manner in which the Mayawati government gave the BJP’s Pilibhit Lok Sabha nominee Varun Gandhi and his supporters a free hand to indulge in blatant vandalism and violence so as to create a riot-like situation in that town, clearly reflects some kind of connivance between the two parties,” Singh told reporters here.
“The action that followed subsequently by the same government against Varun was only a part of the cover-up and meant nothing as the damage was done.”
He sought to argue, “After all I have also been chief minister of Madhya Pradesh for 10 years during which I faced many such situations. Therefore, I know with experience that such situations need to be handled with a firm hand, which also required preventive arrests to be carried out; and at no stage did the Mayawati administration show any serious intention to prevent the violence.”
Accusing the BJP of “doublespeak”, Singh said: “Anyone with common sense could have easily anticipated what the BJP had up its sleeve when its leadership announced its decision to stage a court-arrest drama for Varun.”
According to him, “even BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Lal Krishna Advani was not above the doublespeak habit.”
While he refused to comment on the reasons behind failure of talks between the Congress and Samajwadi Party, he made it loud and clear that the Congress would leave some seats for the Samajwadi Party.
“Just as they have spared a few seats for us, we would also reciprocate by leaving a few seats,” he said, adding that “we have already declared candidates for 56 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 seats while some 10-15 more would follow.”