Lucknow: Samajwadi Party (SP) president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has expressed displeasure over the “objectionable remarks” made by a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA against Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati and said that a defamation case should be filed against the MLA for this statement made in public.
Yadav shared a 30-second video clip of a “discussion” on a news channel on the social media platform ‘X’ on Friday night and wrote, “The indecent words used by a BJP MLA of Uttar Pradesh against a former woman Chief Minister of the state (Mayawati) show how much bitterness the BJP leaders have in their hearts towards women and especially those belonging to the deprived and exploited society.”
Yadav wrote in the same post, “Political differences are in their place, but no one has the right to defame her as a woman.” He said, “BJP leaders are saying that we made a mistake by making her the Chief Minister, this is also an insult to the public opinion in a democratic country and it is also very objectionable to accuse her without any basis that she was the most corrupt Chief Minister.”
The SP chief demanded that a defamation case should be filed against the BJP MLA for this statement made in public. He said, “BJP is hurting the dignity of women by giving shelter to such MLAs. If BJP does not take immediate disciplinary action against such people, then it should be accepted that this is not the personal opinion of any one MLA but the opinion of the entire BJP. Highly condemnable!”
In the news channel video shared by Yadav, Rajesh Chaudhary, MLA from Mant area in Mathura district, can be heard saying, “Mayawati ji has been the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh four times. There is no doubt about this and for the first time it was we (BJP) who made her the Chief Minister.”
Some things are not clear during the conversation and after this Chaudhary is saying, “If there has been any corrupt chief minister in Uttar Pradesh, then her name is Mayawati.” SP and BSP are rivals of each other. However, before the 1993 assembly elections, there was an agreement between the two parties in the assembly elections, then this initiative was taken by BSP founder Kanshiram and SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav.
This agreement was broken after violent clashes between SP and BSP workers in the government guest house of Lucknow in June 1995. BSP then accused Mayawati of being attacked by SP workers and leaders. Then in 2019, an agreement was reached between SP and BSP in the Lok Sabha elections in which BSP won 10 seats and SP won five seats out of 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh, but this agreement was broken in 2019 after the election results came and since then the leaders of both the parties have often been targeting each other.
Political implications are being drawn from this softness of Akhilesh Yadav towards Mayawati.