SP dismisses Azam Khan's absence, says Mulayam has more clout with Muslims

As controversy continues over senior UP Minister Azam Khan keeping away from its Agra meet, the Samajwadi Party today said no one can “blackmail” the party as nobody has the stature which SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav enjoys among the Muslim community. SP National General Secretary Ram Gopal Yadav said Muslims have a lot of faith in Mulayam Singh. [caption id=“attachment_1106489” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  ‘No one can blackmail the party’, he said.[/caption] “No one can blackmail us…as no one has the stature, which Mulayam enjoys among Muslim community, which has undeterred faith in him”, he told PTI. He was responding to a question about Azam Khan keeping away from the two-day national executive meet of the party. Khan had skipped the meet as he was reportedly unhappy with his own government’s handling of the Muzaffarnagar riots that killed 48 people in communal violence. Ram Gopal’s comments come a day after the SP supremo denied any rift with Khan, who is widely considered to be the Samajwadi Party’s Muslim face, saying Khan can never be “upset” with him. Asked about some Muslim organisations demanding the resignation of the UP government over the Muzaffarnagar violence, he said, “Organisations which are demanding the dismissal of Akhilesh Yadav government are professional ones…they can create a propaganda in media but not among the Muslims”. As for the the stand taken by Darul-uloom-Deoband, Yadav said there were several groups there. “There are several groups there, but the biggest one is with us,” he claimed. When asked about the possibility of a rift in the Muslim vote bank in the wake of Muzaffarnagar violence, Ram Gopal said SP never considered them a “votebank”. “We never considered Muslims as a vote bank..their socio-economic condition is not good and SP has always tried to rake up their issues and tried to get them redressed. And this is what parties like BJP term as Muslim appeasement”. The SP leader also said that the traditional vote bank of the BJP has drifted to other parties including the SP, due to which it was allegedly trying to flare communal passion in the country with the sole objective of taking political mileage. As for Congress, Ramgopal said it never wanted the SP to flourish and expand its base.“SP’s loss is Congress gain…They know it very well and its internal agenda is to damage our party”, he said. PTI