No place for criminals in party: MSY
LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party (SP) national president Mulayam Singh Yadav on Saturday made it clear that there was no place for criminals in the party.
Rather, the party valued character, sincerity and honesty, he emphasised. His comment on criminals appeared to be an indirect reference to the abortive tie-up of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s Qaumi Ekta Dal (QED) with the SP.
His strong message came on the back of the stern warning he had issued to party workers on Friday, asking them to mend their ways.
“If our people don’t mend their ways, then winning the elections would be difficult,” he said at a meeting of the party’s legislative council members (MLCs) and zila panchayat chairpersons at the party office on Saturday.
The meeting was called to discuss the 2017 UP assembly elections. He pointed out that certain ‘bad apples’ were ruining the party’s image as they were engaged in loot and extortion.
“They must stop working for private benefits and get busy working for the party’s poll ambitions,” he said.
On Friday, Mulayam had told the party that now people knew how to make governments and replace them.
Minutes after this veiled warning, the party’s state president and chief minister Akhilesh Yadav expelled the Lucknow zila panchayat chairperson and her husband on charges of land-grabbing. While Mulayam was speaking on Saturday, police filed an FIR against a senior party leader Faqir Siddiqui on allegations of high-handedness with a woman and her son.
Mulayam also said there was no alternative to socialist philosophy.
Attacking Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he called it ‘dangerous for the country’. It was using communalism against politics of development, he alleged.
Mulayam called Akhilesh Yadav “a chief minister with impeccable image and character and I hope that the people will bring him back to power.”
Akhilesh Yadav and the SP’s UP in-charge Shivpal Yadav too spoke at the meeting.