Ahead of the UP polls, the BJP and SP are busy mudslinging and calling each other names

The election dates approach, the campaign heat is turning up and the war of words in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh is intensifying and, actually, recording new depths. The main players are the ruling BJP and the Samajwadi Party. In its claim to portray a clean house and rake muck at the BJP, SP president Akhilesh Yadav alleges that the BJP has so far fielded 99 candidates with criminal history. “It’s just short of hitting a century,” he observes. On the other hand, incumbent Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath says the BJP Government is working to protect the masses and instil a sense of safety among them while ensuring that “criminals feel scared” and surrender before the police “with folded hands”. When the BJP returns to power, Yogi promises that his “bulldozer policies” against criminals would continue. The war of words between the SP and the BJP has been swiftly escalating on the issue of siding with criminals. While the BJP has been accusing Yadav and his party of patronising people with criminal backgrounds, the latter has sought to know the number of cases filed against Adityanath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Maurya.

Accusing the other side of arm-twisting, Yadav claimed last Friday that he was stranded in Delhi as his helicopter was not being allowed to take off for Muzaffarnagar “without any reason given for it”. He called it a “desperate conspiracy” of the BJP as “it can sense it’s losing” Uttar Pradesh. The BJP, on the other hand, mocked the SP, saying the party men’s red caps are painted in the blood of victims of Muzaffarnagar riots and ‘kar sweaks’ shot dead in Ayodhya. Taking his attack a notch further, he said the SP’s views are family-centric and Pakistan-centric. Recently, Yadav had said that India’s “real enemy” wasn’t Pakistan, leading to a battery of assault from the BJP camp, who called him “a friend of Pakistan” and that the SP chief would have given a party ticket to Yakub Menon and made Ajmal Kasab his star campaigner. Both the Chief Minister and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have been repeatedly targeting the party colour’s cap. In December last year, addressing a rally in Gorakhpur, the PM had said those in red caps were “red alert” and a “sign of danger” for the State. Earlier, in February, Adityanath had claimed that every child saw those wearing red caps as “goons”.