Kalyan Singh memorial meeting: BJP invites Mulayam, he abstains
LUCKNOW:: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) invited Samajwadi Party (SP) founder Mulayam Singh Yadav to former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh’s memorial meeting in Lucknow on Tuesday, but the SP patriarch stayed away. On the other hand, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was represented by its senior leader Satish Chandra Mishra on the occasion.
UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh had visited Mulayam Singh Yadav on the eve of the meeting and later also spoke to BSP chief Mayawati who was the first among the opposition leaders to pay her last respects to the mortal remains of Kalyan Singh on August 22.
Kalyan Singh died after a long illness at Lucknow’s Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) on August 21.
Mishra attended the memorial meet and praised Kalyan Singh as a great leader. UP BJP chief said that around 30 leaders of small political parties also attended the memorial meetings for Kalyan Singh held across the state.
For his part, the UP BJP chief confirmed he had invited Mulayam to the memorial meeting.
While the BJP described Swatantra Dev Singh’s visit to Mulayam as a “courtesy call”, the Samajwadi Party played up Mulayam’s comments for him.
“Netaji (Mulayam) invited Swatantra Dev ji to join the SP,” said SP leader IP Singh.
“You are doing good work. I have told you many times that you should be in SP and rise,” Singh said, quoting Mulayam Singh.
Samajwad Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, who had been targeted by the BJP for not paying a visit to offer his last respects to late Kalyan Singh, retweeted a tweet by his party’s digital media coordinator Manish Jagan Agrawal in which he had claimed that “Netaji offered UP BJP chief to join Samajwadi Party as he was reportedly angry at the neglect of OBCs in the BJP. Swatantra Dev ji has described it as a courtesy meeting but there is definitely something to it.”
The UP BJP chief had tweeted a photo of his meeting with Mulayam Singh and described it as a ‘courtesy call’.
“I met respected Mulayam Singh ji netaji at his residence to enquire about his well-being and received his blessings. I pray to God for his good health and long life,” Swatantra Dev had tweeted.
The meeting had come in the backdrop of the BJP’s heavy criticism of Mulayam’s son and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav for not paying last respects to Kalyan Singh in person.
Kalyan Singh, a Lodh, was not just a powerful OBC leader, but also a torch bearer of the Ayodhya temple movement.
He became the first BJP chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1991.
The BJP has already named two medical institutes in Lucknow and Bulandshahr after Kalyan Singh and more such dedications are in the offing as the party looks to play up the Other Backward Caste (OBC)-Hindutva connect that Kalyan Singh represented ahead of the assembly elections early next year.
Top BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, defence minister Rajnath Singh, Union home minister Amit Shah, flew down to UP last week to pay their last respects to the late leader.
UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who himself escorted Kalyan’s mortal remains on all three days while they were moved to different parts of the state for people to pay their last respects, had declared a threeday mourning in the state in Kalyan’s honour.