— Photo: Subir Roy

ON CAMPAIGN TRAIL: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh addressing an election meeting in Barabanki district on Tuesday.

HAIDERGARH ( BARABANKI) : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh on Tuesday said the Assembly elections would sound the last post for the Congress, which was already ``wiped out'' in Uttaranchal, Punjab, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and the southern States.

Recalling Mahatma Gandhi's view that the Congress must cease to exist once it achieved its aim of Independence, Mr. Singh said this would become a reality at the end of the ongoing poll, which he sought to project as a battle between his Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Interactive session

At a Samajwadi Party campaign meeting at Subeha village in the Haidergarh constituency — it was an interactive session with the people — Mr. Singh said new political equations were beginning to emerge at the national level after the April 8 Bareilly rally, attended by the former Chief Ministers, N. Chandrababu Naidu (Andhra Pradesh), S. Bangarappa (Karnataka) and Om Prakash Chautala (Haryana), and the former External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh. This was best exemplified by CPI (M) general secretary Prakash Karat's recent statement that the SP, and not the Congress, which could stop the Bharatiya Janata Party in its tracks. He said Mr. Karat also felt the need for new political equations.

Mr. Singh accused the Bahujan Samaj Party and the BJP of dividing society along caste and communal lines. If the BSP came to power, it would invoke the Anti-Dalit Act with telling effect, and further divide society, he cautioned.

Though the BJP manifesto talked of making Uttar Pradesh Sarvottam Pradesh (the very best State), in practice, the party was dividing the people by harping on the Mandir-Masjid theme, Mr. Singh said.

Mr. Singh sought to project a an SP versus the BJP fight in the elections. when he told the people that they had two options before them — the BJP A triangular contest between Mr. Arvind Singh, Ashutosh Awasthi of the BSP and Sunder Lal Dixit of the BJP is in the offing in Haidergarh.

``Looting U.P.''

In Lucknow, Union Minister of Science and Technology Kapil Sibal accused the Mulayam Singh Government of not only making U.P. backward, but also looting it.

Addressing a press conference, Mr. Sibal said the out-of-turn distribution of 28 housing plots in Vipul Khand in the posh Gomtinagar area of Lucknow on August 29, 2005, was an example of the ``loot of U.P.''

He alleged that the plots were given to senior officers, wives of Ministers and persons close to the ruling establishment.

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