India News | Like a Football: UP CM Adityanath Takes a Shot at Shivpal in Mainpuri

Mainpuri (UP), Nov 28 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday mocked socialist leader Shivpal Singh Yadav for changing sides, likening him to a football and a pendulum.

Adityanath was campaigning for the BJP in Mainpuri, the Samajwadi Party bastion where a parliamentary bypoll will be held on December 5, necessitated by the death of SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav.

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SP president Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple Yadav has been fielded by the party. Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) president Shivpal Yadav, who had broken away from the SP headed by his nephew, is now campaigning for her.

At an election rally in Akhilesh Yadav's own Karhal assembly segment, the chief minister paid tributes to his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, but picked on a controversial remark in Parliament where the SP patriarch had praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

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He slammed Akhilesh Yadav, claiming he didn't visit his constituency when he was needed there and did not spare his uncle Shivpal Yadav either.

“One day I was reading a statement by uncle Shivpal, his condition has become like that of a pendulum,” the CM said at the rally to back BJP nominee Raghuraj Singh Shakya. He said a pendulum commands no respect and one should not become that in life.

He referred to a time when Shivpal Yadav “didn't even get a chair” and had to rest on the arm of a chair.

And without taking names, he said, "When one moves about like a football, one man kicks from this side and the other from that side. Some people have become a football; there is a need to save one self from becoming a football."

He referred to the "blessings"his own party received from the SP patriarch.

"I pay humble tributes to netaji Mulayam Singh Yadav. I pay tribute to him because he had said in the Parliament in 2019 itself that BJP will come to power in whichever elections are held next.”

“It was the result of netaji's blessings that the Bharatiya Janata Party candidates demolished SP's traditional strongholds like Azamgarh and Rampur in the Lok Sabha by-elections and reached the Lok Sabha with a huge majority,” he said.

BJP had won the Azamgarh and Rampur seats vacated by Akhilesh Yadav and Azam Khan respectively after becoming MLAs.

“Once again the dream of the late ‘netaji' is going to come true here. I have come here to appeal to you for the BJP," he added, predicting a BJP win in the SP heartland.

He repeated allegations of graft in government recruitment while the SP was in power, claiming that “the uncle and the nephew” took a cut.

“The youth were exploited and Etawah and Mainpuri were defamed then because of this," he said.

Adityanath accused the SP and the Yadav family of dynastic politics. "Some people do politics in the name of secularism, raise big slogans and call themselves socialists but their real character is only 'pariwarvad',” he said.

“They need everything for the family, be it the post of the national president, chief minister, national general secretary, MP, MLA, block head -- all from the family. They cannot move out of the circle of the family," he said.

Apparently referring to Akhilesh Yadav, Adityanath asked people if their representative ever visited them during the coronavirus pandemic.

“He will not come as he has no time to enquire about your condition. He will take care of your condition only if he has time from his circle of friends,” the CM said. “Now he has come to emotionally lure Mainpuri once again."

He claimed that people connected with the SP raised their “own palaces” whenever the party came to power but the houses for the poor in Mainpuri and Etawah were not built.

Unlike other parties, he said, the BJP is a family and he has come to include Mainpuri in the “BJP family.”

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)