Akhilesh Yadav's criticism of congress shows fault lines in INDIA bloc
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New Delhi: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav criticised previous Congress-led governments for failing to conduct caste census, giving rise to doubts about INDIA bloc’s unity.
More important, it underlines the deeper differences between two parties even as they claim to be forming a formidable force.
Yadav’s criticism followed Rahul Gandhi’s reported likening of caste census to a sort of ‘X-ray’.
Samajwadi Party chief was talking to news agency ANI in Satna in Madhya Pradesh when he had attacked the previous governments over caste census.
Rahul Gandhi on Monday compared caste census to ‘X-ray’ that would give details of various communities in the country, according to NDTV.
Yadav mocked Rahul Gandhi saying that caste census should have been carried out earlier when ‘X-ray’ was the need of the hour.
‘X-ray was the need of that time. Now we have MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and CT (computed tomography) scan. The disease has now spread. If this problem was solved back then, such a gap wouldn't have existed in the society today,’ he was quoted as saying.
He described Rahul Gandhi’s call for caste census as ‘the biggest miracle’, adding that those who now talk about ‘ X-rays’ stopped caste census after Independence.
‘When Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav), Sharad Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav, and parties from South India raised the demand in Lok Sabha, the Congress refused to do it,’ he was quoted as saying.
Yadav, taking on the Congress, said that the party now demanded caste census because it lost traditional vote bank, adding that ‘But the backward classes, Dalit, and adivasis know that they had betrayed them after Independence.’
The relations between both parties soured over seat sharing ahead of Madhya Pradesh assembly polls with Yadav recently saying that the Congress did not want alliance with his party.
Meanwhile, a poster that appeared outside Samajwadi Party office termed Yadav as the ‘future prime minister’.
Another poster that was put up outside a Congress office in Lucknow described Rahul Gandhi as ‘2024 prime minister’.