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SP leader quits in protest against Mulayam's tall claim

Samajwadi Party's Uttar Pradesh unit general secretary Shyam Mishra has resigned from the party's primary membership.

Mishra, a former legislator, said this was in protest against party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's statement that the SP alone was capable of countering the Bharatiya Janata Party's communal politics.

He expressed consonance with Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee president Salman Khurshid's stand that non-BJP parties should join with the Congress against the BJP.

Keeping away from the Congress would benefit the Hindutva party, Mishra said.

In the recent assembly election, the electorate had rejected, along with the BJP, the groups seeking to forge a third front. The masses have recognised the Congress as the only capable alternative, he observed.

The need of the hour was to prevent the division of anti-BJP votes and to bring to an end the treatment of minorities as vote banks.

He alleged that Ram Manohar Lohia's socialism had vanished and Yadav's ''personal brand'' of politics had taken over within the Samajwadi Party.

UNI

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