New Delhi: Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav today slammed the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, calling it "schizophrenic", hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a jibe at regional parties allying with the Congress in a blog.
"I wonder which principles are being spoken of. The BJP seems to be schizophrenic," Mr Yadav tweeted, sharing PM Modi's blog on socialist political leader Ram Manohar Lohia.
"On the one hand, they try to co-opt Gandhiji, Bhagat Singh, Sardar Patel, Dr Ambedkar and Dr Lohia and on the other hand they follow people who these leaders opposed and disagreed with," Mr Yadav further said, attacking the prime minister.
PM Modi had launched a similar attack at regional parties earlier in the day, calling the alliance of the political parties that follow Dr Lohia's ideology with Congress "ironical" and "reprehensible". "Parties that falsely claim to be Dr. Lohia's followers are desperate to form an opportunistic Maha Milawat -- or adulteration alliance -- with the same Congress. It is both ironical and reprehensible," he said.
In his tribute to socialist political leader Ram Manohar Lohia on his 109th birth anniversary, PM Modi said that the "prolific thinker, exceptional intellectual, revolutionary and devout patriot" was known for his "anti-Congressism".
"Dr Lohia knew how disastrous the Congress was," PM Modi said. "In 1962, he said that neither agriculture, industry nor the army improved during the Congress regime."
The Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party has stitched an alliance with Mayawati's Bahujan Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh for the national elections that will begin on April 11. Although the Congress will go it alone in the state, the Mayawati-Akhilesh alliance has decided against contesting in the Congress strongholds of Amethi and Rae Bareli.
Earlier in the day, Mr Yadav paid tributes to Dr Lohia at an event in Lucknow where he accused the BJP of suppressing backward communities. "They (BJP) should remember that Dalits and backward communities are aware of their mindset. And people are now ready to give their reply in the Lok Sabha polls," he was quoted as saying by news agency IANS.
"When the BJP came to power, it said it will hug the backward communities. But they have instead suppressed them," he said.