Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said on Tuesday that Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam President MK Stalin’s proposal to pitch Congress chief Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate of the Opposition for the 2019 General Elections is the opinion of one person, and not all alliance partners.
“Someone’s opinion does not have to be the alliance’s opinion too,” the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister told reporters in Lucknow, NDTV reported. “So this exercise will keep going on. The Bharatiya Janata Party need not worry about it.”
“The public wants this government to go and some kind of alliance to be formed in the country,” Yadav claimed. He said this is why Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao tried to call leaders of all parties to discuss forming an alliance. “The same way, even [West Bengal Chief Minister] Mamataji tried forming some kind of an alliance. Same way even [Nationalist Congress Party chief] Sharad Pawar ji had tried, [Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister] Chandrababu Naidu is also trying,” the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister added.
Yadav also criticised Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath’s claim that residents of the state do not get jobs because of migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. “This is wrong,” the Samajwadi Party chief said about Nath’s comments, The Indian Express reported. “Earlier, we used to hear such comments in Maharashtra. They used to say that North Indians come to their state, do business and take up most of the jobs. The same things were heard from Delhi and now from Madhya Pradesh.”
BJP mocks Stalin for proposing Gandhi’s name
Meanwhile, the BJP mocked Stalin for proposing Gandhi’s name as the prime ministerial candidate, PTI reported. The party said the DMK had not managed to convince even its alliance partners.
BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav claimed that the prime minister’s post would not be vacant for another 10 years. “The post is not vacant for the next at least 10 more years,” Madhav said. “Soon after the announcement [by Stalin] that Gandhi will be the prime minister, somebody elsewhere in the country said we are also in the queue...‘how you can say that he is the only person, I am also there’.”
Madhav claimed that no single party in India has the “courage or stamina” to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP. He also mocked Stalin’s name. “I pity some leaders...they are named Stalin [a reference to former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin] and he calls others fascists,” he said. “We have seen the face of fascism in the state under the great DMK.”
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