LUCKNOW: The flurry of pointed remarks unleashed at Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav by the top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ranks — "Abba Jaan", "Akhilesh Ali Jinnah" and "Wayde Azam" — has once again brought the political gaze on saffron outfit's deft attempts to bracket SP tightly against the minority vote bank and differentiate it with the larger social coalition of Hindu sub-castes.
BJP sources said that the party is working on a strategy to disturb SP's plan to expand its reach beyond the Muslim-Yadav consolidation to raise itself as the most potent rival of saffron outfit in the UP elections.
This became apparent recently when BJP's Rajya Sabha MP Harnath Singh Yadav tweeted that his demand for reservation for OBC's in Aligarh Muslim University and Jamia Milia Islamia University had been met a raging protests by the opposition, including the SP.
Yadav's tweet gained much pertinence also in the backdrop of a host of OBC leaders including Swami Prasad Maurya, Dara Singh Chauhan and Dharam Singh Saini quitting the BJP to join the SP.
BJP sources said the induction of Hari Om Yadav, a relative of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, in the BJP and fielding him from Sirsaganj (Firozabad) was also one of the key moves to send tremors in the SP camp.
Experts said that the SP has been trying to remodel itself by watering down its image of a party being backed essentially by the Muslim community.
Akhilesh’s promise of installing Parshuram statues in different districts of UP and then claiming of getting Lord Krishna in his dreams were seen as crafty attempts to reach out to the upper castes, which, otherwise, have traditionally been siding with the BJP since the Ram Temple movement.
The BJP, party sources said, was in no mood to sit back.
It kept raking up the incident of firing at kar sevaks in Ayodhya during the tenure of Mulayam Singh Yadav in 1990.
The BJP eventually got an opportunity as Akhilesh stoked a raging controversy by comparing Muslim league leader and Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah with Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel and Mahatma Gandhi. This was on October 31, the birth anniversary of Patel.
BJP sources said that the party decided to step up its attack on Akhilesh and corner him over the issue of "minority appeasement" by invoking Jinnah.
While Yogi’s "Abba Jaan" comment on Akhilesh had already caught up with the saffron ranks, deputy CM Keshav Maurya let loose a fresh salvo calling SP chief as "Akhilesh Ali Jinnah".
Three days ago, deputy CM Dinesh Sharma, too, hit out at Akhilesh calling him as "Wayde Azam" while rebuking him for promising the old pension scheme to the state government scheme which was done away with during the tenure of his father Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Yogi, too, joined Sharma in slamming Akhilesh saying: "it was his (Akhilesh’s) Abba Jaan who replaced the old pension scheme with the new one".
