Wooing Muslims: Maya raises stake
Subodh Ghildiyal
Sunday, February 19, 2006
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
NEW DELHI: With Bahujan Samaj Party deciding to engage arch-rival Samajwadi Party in oneupmanship over the cartoon controversy, anti-Iran vote and Muslim headcount in the Army, Congress faces the threat of being relegated to the margins of politics in UP.
Forced into a corner by the aggression adopted by SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati on Sunday chose to spell out a policy clearly matching the SP.
In a detailed statement, she spoke in favour of the controversial survey in the Army, demanded that the government snap diplomatic ties with Denmark over the offending cartoons and slammed the UPA regime's vote against Iran.
With just a year to go for assembly polls in UP, the two parties have plunged headlong into political mobilisation but Mayawati's statement seems to have raised the stakes.
Mayawati slammed the Congress decision to "dump Iran under US pressure", and also warned "people to beware of SP which, while not leaving no stone unturned in entertaining ex-US president Bill Clinton, goes to uncivilised levels to criticise US for votebank politics".
Mayawati's political positioning came as bete-noire Mulayam appeared to steal a march in the race for the Muslim vote with an assault on Congress on the Iran issue, making country's stand appear as an anti-Muslim measure.
The BSP felt that SP's moves could neutralise the inroads it has made among the Muslims in the recent years.
The SP leadership has been working the streets at fever pitch.
Close on the heels of its indulgence of the outrageous rabble-rousing by the UP Haj minister Yaqoob Qureshi in Meerut, where he announced a bounty on the head of the Danish cartoonist, UP police on Sunday winked at a fiery demonstration in Lucknow where the protestors brandished weapons and fired shots in the air.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
NEW DELHI: With Bahujan Samaj Party deciding to engage arch-rival Samajwadi Party in oneupmanship over the cartoon controversy, anti-Iran vote and Muslim headcount in the Army, Congress faces the threat of being relegated to the margins of politics in UP.
Forced into a corner by the aggression adopted by SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati on Sunday chose to spell out a policy clearly matching the SP.
In a detailed statement, she spoke in favour of the controversial survey in the Army, demanded that the government snap diplomatic ties with Denmark over the offending cartoons and slammed the UPA regime's vote against Iran.
With just a year to go for assembly polls in UP, the two parties have plunged headlong into political mobilisation but Mayawati's statement seems to have raised the stakes.
Mayawati slammed the Congress decision to "dump Iran under US pressure", and also warned "people to beware of SP which, while not leaving no stone unturned in entertaining ex-US president Bill Clinton, goes to uncivilised levels to criticise US for votebank politics".
Mayawati's political positioning came as bete-noire Mulayam appeared to steal a march in the race for the Muslim vote with an assault on Congress on the Iran issue, making country's stand appear as an anti-Muslim measure.
The BSP felt that SP's moves could neutralise the inroads it has made among the Muslims in the recent years.
The SP leadership has been working the streets at fever pitch.
Close on the heels of its indulgence of the outrageous rabble-rousing by the UP Haj minister Yaqoob Qureshi in Meerut, where he announced a bounty on the head of the Danish cartoonist, UP police on Sunday winked at a fiery demonstration in Lucknow where the protestors brandished weapons and fired shots in the air.
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