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Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh said on Wednesday that his party is open for an alliance with the Congress to form an alternative government in Uttar Pradesh.
He refused to say how an SP-Congress combine would be able to dislodge the Bharatiya Janata Party-Bahujan Samaj Party government. "Should I caution those who are ready and willing to join us by naming them," he asked.
Singh recalled his recent meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and said, "On the question of secularism, we had supported the Congress on three occasions, and now on the issue of rooting out the communal forces from power in Uttar Pradesh, the Congress party should support the SP."
Asked if there are any problems in forming an alliance, Singh said, "Unfortunately, the Congress leaders do not restrain from carrying on their below-the-belt onslaught against SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav."
Former state Congress president Salman Khursheed had even gone to the extent of dubbing Yadav a "political terrorist", he said.
He expressed serious reservations about the "first-finish-SP-then-fight-BJP" strategy of the Congress.
Asked if his party would join the anti-BJP front in Gujarat and give a free hand to the Congress in the upcoming assembly election, as proposed by the Left parties and some other leaders, Singh said the SP has not taken a decision on the issue.
He alleged that Divestment Minister Arun Shouri had, in his latest book Worshipping The False Gods, accused dalit leader B R Ambedkar of being an "agent of the British".
The SP would distribute millions of copies of the book, he said.
Chief Minister Mayawati, who claims to have the betterment of dalits on her mind, has not take note of the fact that Shouri was a protégé of Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani, who recently shared a dais with her during a rally in Lucknow, he alleged.
"This is a peculiar alliance [BSP-BJP]... one spits venom on Mahatma Gandhi while the other spits venom on Ambedkar," he said.
He said the SP supported the Congress' struggle for the return of the land allotted to the Indira Gandhi Pratisthan, which was later used to build a memorial for Ambedkar. "Mayawati has become a land-grabbing mafia in the state."
He said, "Our party may have other political differences with the Congress, like it had differences with late Mrs Indira Gandhi, but on this issue [land transfer] the SP would support the Congress with all its might."
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