VP still anti-Congress

Former Prime Minister VP Singh may be busy cobbling together an anti-Samajwadi Party, anti-BJP front in Uttar Pradesh, but Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday made it clear that he was committed to anti-Congressism.

The UP chief minister, who has had a running feud with the Congress since 1999, when he denied Sonia Gandhi a chance to don the Prime Minister’s robe after the collapse of the NDA government, on Monday announced a monthly “honorarium” of Rs 500 each to all the political prisoners from the state who had been detained under MISA during emergency. The detainees, he said, would also be allowed free travel in the state roadways buses.

The package announced by the state government, may not be enough for this group of people to carry on with their lives, but the move was loaded with political meanings, as it aimed at projecting the Samajwadi Party as the most formidable claimant of the anti-Congress space in the state, brushing aside the claims of the BJP.

It was also intended to poke fun at politicians such as Ram Vilas Paswan and Lalu Prasad Yadav, who began their political careers protesting against the excesses of emergency, but had changed their stripes since then to stay in power.

Mr Yadav made these announcements while addressing a meeting of MISA and DIR (Defence of India Rules act, 1975) detainees from the state at a function in Lucknow.

The chief minister equated the detainees to freedom fighters, They’d henceforth, he maintained, be known as “Loktantra senani” (saviours of democracy).

The MISA and DIR detainees would be paid Rs 500 per month with effect from April 1, ‘06, Mr Yadav said. The Samajwadi Party supremo used the occasion to reminisce his experiences during the “dark days of emergency, imposed in 1975 by the late Indira Gandhi”. The role played by these detainees in “safeguarding democracy“ could never be forgotten, he maintained.

Mr Fernandes, who also addressed the gathering, recalled his “imprisonment during the period,” even as he called for a “joint struggle against the capitalist forces.”

He also lashed out at the CPI for supporting the proclamation of the Emergency of 1975 and apprehended that “an Emergency-like situation is again visible in the country — farmers are committing suicide, inflation is rising.”

The chief minister compared the present situation in the country with that of the emergency, alleging that the present dispensation at the Centre was pursuing a dangerous policy. “Pressing issues are being ignored while a witchhunt is on against its opponents” and various groups were uniting against him with the sole aim of ousting the SP from power, he said.

Mr Yadav said that the forthcoming assembly elections in the state would be very crucial as it would decide the country’s political direction, and claimed that the Congress and BJP cannot come to power at the Centre on their own, at least for the next ten years.