Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav
Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav has sparked outrage with his comment that those still staying in relief camps in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh are not victims of the September riots in the area, but activists planted by the BJP and Congress.
"There are no riot victims at all in the camps. There is not even one. You can check. These are people who are conspirators. The BJP and Congress have conspired. They have asked people to stay there at night and protest. This is a conspiracy," Mulayam Singh said, lashing out at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's visit to some of the relief camps on Sunday.
Mr Yadav's comments have been slammed as insensitive at a time several child deaths have been reported in the relief camps that were set up for the people driven out of their villages during the communal clashes that engulfed Muzaffarnagar in September.
A three-year-old boy died of pneumonia on Sunday in a camp in the Shamli district, where at least three other children have died in the past three months. The child's parents told NDTV that they had no help from the government and no doctors either. "We can't go back to our villages. It is not safe," the boy's father told NDTV.
Doctors visited the camp for the first time on Monday, despite reports of child deaths. Some 400 displaced families are still in the camps, trying to survive the rising winter chill with only plastic sheets as roofs. Nearly 50 people were killed and 40,000 forced to leave their villages during the riots.
The state's ruling Samajwadi Party, however, dismissed allegations of poor facilities in the camps. "They are misleading people. They are being tutored by political parties," said Mulayam Singh.
The BJP lashed out at the Samajwadi Party chief's comments. "The state government says the affected are not riot victims but belong to a political party. They should identify them, Instead of giving them relief, the government is hurting them more." said BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.