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Shekhar hails Mulayam for preventing Congress rule

Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya) chief and former prime minister Chandra Shekher has praised Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav for preventing the Congress from forming the government at the Centre and announced a tie-up between the two parties.

He held the Congress responsible for various ills affecting the country and "destabilising many governments" in the past.

The SJP "wants to make it clear that in the present political situation it shares a common perspective and political strategy with the Samajwadi Party and will continue its relations", party general secretary Om Prakash Srivastava said in a statement in New Delhi today.

The SJP decried the Congress attempt to form an alternative government in "an autocratic manner". It also criticised a section of the Left for projecting Yadav as "the villain of the sordid drama of forming a government after the fall of the A B Vajpayee government".

Meanwhile, six Muslim politicians of the Samajwadi Party today hailed Mulayam Singh for not extending "unconditional support" to the Congress for forming an alternative government at the Centre.

They said the Congress wanted to form its own government to "weaken" Yadav's party and benefit in the next election, they said.

The politicians also questioned how Yadav and All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary J Jayalalitha, who played crucial roles leading to the fall of the Vajpayee government, could be ignored in the formation of an alternative government.

The joint statement was signed, among others, by former Union minister Salim Iqbal Sherwani, Mohammad Usman and members of Parliament Dr Shafiq-ur-Rehman Burq, Rizwan Zahir and Munawar Hussain.

Samajwadi Party activists today also staged a demonstration at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, where party politicians accused the Congress of being "power-hungry" and out to undermine the unity of secular forces.

UNI

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