MP Mulayam visits Azamgarh first time after Lok Sabha elections

Mangalore Today News Network

Lucknow, February 7, 2015: On Friday, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav addressed a public meeting in his parliamentary constituency Azamgarh which he visited for the first time since the Lok Sabha elections of May 2014.

That his absence was acutely felt by the electorate was very obvious. Mulayam initially found it tough to make people listen to his announcement of Rs.2,000-crore gifts to his Parliamentary constituency.

Last week, local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members had put up posters of "Missing Mulayam" across the city because of the absence of their local MP.

Aamir Rashadi, the president of Rashtriya Ulama Council, who had contested against Mulayam in 2014, had also alleged that the SP patriarch had misused the vote of the people by ignoring Azamgarh and developing Saifai, his own village.

So during Friday’s programme, the job to pacify the people was assigned to party leader from Maharashtra, Abu Asim Azmi, who refreshed the wounds of the alleged killing of two youths from Sanjarpur village of the district in Delhi’s Batla House encounter in 2008.

While claiming that the SP has always demanded a high-level inquiry into the infamous encounter, Azmi said, "The Centre has always ignored our demand of a CBI probe into the Batla House encounter. But the SP government in the state has immediately recommended a CBI inquiry in Kunda DSP Zia-ul-Haq’s murder case."

But Rashadi said, "Mulayam never took up the issue of the killing of the youths of Sanjarpur (Azamgarh). He was an ally of the Congress which was in power at the Centre during the Batla House shooting. But the people still voted the SP to power in 2012 with the hope that he will take up the issue of atrocities against Muslim youths languishing in jails without any genuine cases against them."

He said it seems Mulayam is "more interested in personal gains and development of his own village".

"This is why he was booed during his rally. The SP chief is grossly mistaken if he thinks that he can regain the affection of Muslims," Rashadi added.

It is common knowledge that the SP leader’s silence on the Batla House case and the murder of DSP Haq in 2013 are two important reasons why the Muslim community is angry with Mulayam.

Meanwhile, during his address in Azamgarh, the SP chief attacked the prime minister on the black money issue and said Narendra Modi, during the Lok Sabha election campaign, had alerted those Indians who had stashed black money in Swiss banks. "We all remember how Modi used to give speeches during the 2014 elections and make big promises. In fact, he had alerted the depositors to withdraw their money from foreign banks," Mulayam said.

Courtesy: Indiatoday