Didn't Respect His Own Father: UP Congress Chief On Akhilesh Yadav As Cracks Widen Within INDI Alliance

After Kamal Nath ignored Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav's allegations, the latter reiterated his stance that Congress should have made it clear beforehand.

"If you (Congress) didn't intend to allocate seats, you shouldn't have talked to SP leaders. Whatever support you sought, SP would have probably given. But you didn't consider SP worthy enough, Yadav told ANI.

On the matter of contesting assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh scheduled for 17 November, he said, "We are contesting where we have an organisation."

When asked about INDI Alliance, he said. "Now I got to know that the alliance is for Lok Sabha elections. So we will talk about it when the general election approaches. The discussion will be held on a different platform."

Yadav said targeting Congress, "The question is of credibility. If the Congress behaves like this, who will be with them? I am not giving any advice to Congress but the BJP is an organised party and to fight against it, there should be no confusion."

Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Rai reacted to Yadav's statements saying, "Mulayam Singh always respected us and we too respected him and will continue to do so. But the person who didn't respect his own father, how he will respect us."

On Yadav's statement that "These Congress people are with the BJP," Rai said, "We supported SP during the Ghosi by-election and their candidate won by a great margin. At the same time, Uttarakhand's Bageshwar too had polls where the SP fielded its candidate. Consequently, BJP won and Congress lost."

Rhetorically saying that this proves who is with BJP and working with it, Rai said, "The same thing will happen in Madhya Pradesh. The SP doesn't have a support base there, still they want to contest. They don't even have a lone MLA."

Calling on the SP to support Congress, he responded to the "chirkut" remark by Yadav against him saying, "He may abuse me, disrespect me, I won't respond. My only response is that support Congress."