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Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav sees nothing wrong with his decision to shake hands with his one time bete noire Kalyan Singh.
"Today, Kalyan Singh is vehemently opposed to the basic ideology of the Sangh Parivar. He is critical of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad," Mulayam Singh said at a press conference in Lucknow on Thursday.
Kalyan Singh had raised his own outfit -- the Rashtriya Kranti Party -- in Uttar Pradesh after falling out with the BJP.
"Why only Kalyan Singh, if Mr Atal Bihari Vajayee and Mr L K Advani were to dissociate themselves with the BJP and its allies, I would not mind joining hands with them," the SP chief said.
On being asked if his alliance with Kalyan Singh did not amount to giving the RKP leader a clean chit in the Babri Masjid demolition case, Mulayam said it was the Congress which was responsible for the demolition. "Who laid the foundation for the Ram temple; in whose regime were the gates of the locked Ayodhya temple opened?" he asked
He said the idea behind the Samajwad Party joining hands with the RKP was to bring underprivileged sections of the society on a common platform. "This has become necessary because all other [parties] have begun to play the politics of caste and religion. If they think they can rule with 20 per cent votes, it is our turn to tell them that the backwards form 54 per cent of the population in Uttar Pradesh."
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