Mulayam joins hands with VP, to float joint forum

“Like Ravana, the BJP has 10 heads and the Sangh Parivar leaders speak in 10 different languages,” he said.

The SP leader alleged that Vajpayee’s remarks were part of a BJP strategy to recapture its eroding public base. He alleged that the BJP has seen a downward slide in its support base in successive polls and had raised the Temple issue to polarise Hindu votes.

“But the people have become wiser now and won’t be be fooled by them as they know their gameplan,” Mulayam said.

Blaming both the Congress and the BJP for the Babri Masjid demolition, he alleged it was the Congress which had helped build the Temple and install idols after the Masjid was demolished.

On BJP chief Bangaru Laxman’s call to Muslims to join the party, Mulayam said that the Muslims against whom the BJP had been spewing venom from the day the Jana Sangh was formed, would never trust them.

The SP supremo expressed the hope that with the Forward Bloc, the RSP and former prime minister Chandra Shekhar’s Samajwadi Janata Party, already with him, his morcha would now work without any hindrance. He said his party’s district unit chiefs, who had been called here to analyse the urban local bodies poll results in the state, also condemned Vajpayee’s remarks on the temple issue.

Describing the BJP Government as anti-farmer, Mulayam alleged that sugarcane, wheat, paddy and potato growers had lost about Rs 11,000 crore due to unseasonal rains, distress sales and non-payment by sugar mills but their cry has fallen on deaf ears.

Despite the Central Government’s claims to the contrary, at many places paddy purchasing centres had not yet been opened. New potato is selling for Re 1 a kilogram which is far less than the cost of production, he said.