Stand against Modi brings Kejri, Maya and Mulayam on same page

NEW DELHI: Opposition parties came on the same page on Thursday to launch an attack on the Modi government.

Uttar Pradesh political stalwarts Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati demanded immediate rollback of the Centre’s decision to abolish high-value notes, likening the move to the period of Emergency in the late 1970s.

Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati seldom speak the same language on any subject. However, they both slammed the NDA government’s decision to pull `500 and `1,000 rupee notes out of circulation.

“The Modi government has slapped Emergency without sending people to jail and the BJP cares only about elections, not the problems faced by common people. The government has spread anarchy in the entire country, common man is not even able to buy daily products,” Yadav said.

Both Yadav and Mayawati called the move anti-poor, saying it served the interests of only “big industrialists” who backed the BJP.

The two UP parties, which have been ruling the state alternately since 2003, said demonetisation exercise is the BJP’s ploy to divert people’s attention from “failures of the BJP government at the Centre” before elections in the state.

“Just before UP elections, Modi has realised the problem of black money after remaining in the saddle at the Centre for two-and-ahalf years ,” Mayawati said.

Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal too lashed out at PM Narendra Modi and challenged him to make public the names of the 648 Indians with Swiss bank accounts whose details, he said, were given to New Delhi during the earlier UPA rule.

Insisting that the demonetisation will not check corruption, Kejriwal asserted that the problem of black money could be tackled if Modi ordered the arrest of Indians alleged to have maintained Swiss bank accounts.

“But you won’t arrest them because they are your friends,” he said. (With agency inputs)