Lucknow: BSP national president Mayawati on Saturday criticised Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav for his ‘chavanni’ dig at Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and its chief and union minister Jayant Chaudhary. She demanded an apology from Yadav for his “arrogant and undemocratic rhetoric”, which, she said, was not only made against the RLD and its chief but also against the entire Jat community.The SP chief’s statement about RLD and its head that he made the ‘chavanni’ (25 paise) into a one-rupee coin, “was utterly indecent, unbecoming and extremely shameful,” said Mayawati, adding that Yadav should immediately apologise not only to RLD and its chief but also to the entire Jat community for insulting the family of Chaudhary Charan Singh.All that SP knows is to get its work done in alliances and, once that is done, the party changes its colour like a chameleon and freely uses abusive language against its alliance partners, said Mayawati.She said SP’s political narrow-mindedness and casteist hatred have rendered it untrustworthy.“This has made the BJP reap political and electoral benefits, and secular forces to weaken. Due to this very arrogant nature of the party, back in 1993, the SP-BSP alliance formed in UP with Mulayam Singh Yadav broke down quickly, leading to the infamous Lucknow state guest house incident on Jun 2, 1995, as part of the conspiracy to murder me,” she said.Recalling her party’s alliance with SP for lok sabha elections in 2019, she said that it too broke off after some time due to SP’s arrogant and selfish attitude. “SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had assured to not repeat his father’s mistake while forming an electoral alliance with BSP in 2019,” she said.She also called out SP for interchanging ‘P’ in his PDA (Pichchde-Dalit-Alpsankhyak) acronym between ‘backwards’ and ‘Pandits’.
