Rahul tera apman nahi sahenge, chant Cong workers

SOON AFTER SP national president Akhilesh Yadav announced 208 candidates for the first two phases of UP polls, there was chaos at the Congress headquarters in Lucknow. State Congress president Raj Babbar, who arrived at the party office around 2 pm from New Delhi, was welcomed by workers with slogans such as “Rahul Gandhi tera apman nahi sahenge” and “Jo na hua baap ka... woh kya hoga aap ka”.

Babbar indicated that the final decision on the Sp-congress alliance was yet to be taken and that he was in Lucknow to complete formalities for filing nomination forms.

As party workers continued chanting slogans against the SP, he said: “The SP has released its list of candidates. Every party has the right to release its own list... I cannot say anything on the alliance but workers’ respect is the party respect... and no talks are above the respect of party workers.”

On probable tie-ups with smaller parties like Peace Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal, Babbar said: “There are many parties in UP that appear small but are not so... it is the responsibility of all like-minded parties to come together to stop communal forces.”

Sources said the Congress high command asked Babbar to wait at Lucknow airport in case he had to attend a meeting with Akhilesh for final talks on the alliance. He, however, left for Delhi in the evening.

Meanwhile, Congress’s Shamli MLA Pankaj Mallik — from whose seat the SP has declared the candidature of Manish Chauhan — was busy campaigning for himself. His seat is due for polls on February 11. “We have nothing to say (about the SP list) and will do what the party high command tells us,” Mallik said.

With the SP giving a ticket to sitting Congress MLA Mavia Ali from Deoband, Shashi Walia, Saharanpur district Congress president, said, “We will follow Rahul Gandhi’s decision, but it is a request from us workers that the party should think twice about offering tickets to outsiders like Mavia Ali, who are opportunists.”

“We were suspecting that he had been with SP for about a month... But with an alliance being on the cards, we did not think that Ali would quietly join the SP,” he added.