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February 24, 2007 23:46 IST
Former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh, his new found deputy Raj Babbar and Lok Janshakti Party President Ram Vilas Paswan took to a common dais on Saturday afternoon to kick-off their election campaign in Uttar Pradesh.
Addressing an impressive joint rally at the sprawling Ambedkar Maidan in Lucknow, they not only gave a call for Dalit-Muslim unity, but condemned all but the Congress party.
Each of the three leaders trained their guns at the ruling Samajwadi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party and well as the Bahujan Samaj Party -- which incidentally were seen as the key political players in the electoral battle to be fought barela a month and a half from now.
Singh and Paswan announced in Lucknow that their respective political outfits were thrashing out a strategy to jointly contest the forthcoming assembly poll. Singh heads the year old Jan Morcha whose convenor, actor turned politician Raj Babbar took the opportunity to make an emotive appeal to both Dalits and Muslims to strengthen the new alliance.
To provide them another shot in the arm came Mulayam's cabinet colleague and rebel Haji Yaqoob Quraishi, who openly flayed is on chief minister. Quraishi has joined the United Democratic Front, floated by Delhi's Jama Masjid Imam Maulana Ahmed Bukhari, as an essentially Muslim political party.
Despite the fact that Paswan hails from Bihar and completely lacks political base in UP, he managed to gather crowds at his rally. People were brought from his home state by six special trains hired by LJP.
While on one hand, the three leaders flayed the UP chief minister for the "deplorable" law and order in the state, on the other they lambasted Bahujan Samaj Party for digressing from its original ideological path , as also decrying the Bhartiya Janata Party for playing communal politics.
Raj Babbar trained his guns on Big 'B' Amitabh Bachchan, who as UP government's official brand ambassador had been busy campaigning for Mulayam Singh Yadav. "I respect Amitabh Bachchan as a great artist , but it was high time he gave a thought to what he was doing -- giving UP a certificate for good governance and for a great law and order , when he was fully aware of the ground realities", Barran remarked.
He went on to add, "I do not abhor him for his opulence in purchasing a Rs 2 crore car; but sure enough if he chooses to call UP a crime-free state , I have reason to despise him; if not the so many other counts reflectiong UP's pathetic law and order, he ought to have heard of the gangrape of women in a UP madrassa or at least about the gruesome Nithari killings."
Babbar went on to ask, "and if he has, then wasn't it unworthy on his part to be issuing a clean chit to the UP through his much hyped advertisements on TV as well as other media?"
While the three leaders were focused heavily on Muslims, V P Singh went to the extent of promising reservation in government jobs to the downtrodden castes among Muslims.
Taking a dig at BSP chief Mayawati he told the gathering, "When BSP could not do justice to its creator Kanshi Ram , what can you expect from it ?"
Paswan sought to dub BSP as "Brahmin Samaj Party," while criticising Mayawati for wooing upper caste Brahmins.
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