New Delhi:
Expelled Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh on Thursday accused the party leadership of using him as a "dust bin" and shifting the blame on him for decisions that later backfired.
"My journey in SP has been from a dust bin to being termed as garbage," he told reporters here. Singh said he is being blamed for the various decisions the party leadership took after they backfired including extending the hand of friendship to former BJP leader Kalyan Singh.
While claiming that most of the decisions were taken by party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and his cousin Ram Gopal Yadav, he said, "Now I am being blamed for them... I am a kshatriya. Had they asked me to take responsibility for the wrong decisions they have taken, I would have readily accepted. But it is a conspiracy to blame me for everything which went wrong".
He claimed he was recuperating in a Singapore hospital when both Mulayam and Kalyan shared the dais during the party's convention in Agra last year. "Do you think that I became a ghost and whispered in Mulayam Singhji's ears to place the party's red cap on Kalyan Singh's head," Singh said.
The former SP leader said that several Muslim leaders and workers were "shocked" at the party's move to shake hands with Kalyan Singh.
"But they were forced to raise slogans like Kalyan Singh zindabad," he said, adding that blaming him for getting close to Kalyan Singh was wrong on part of leaders like national spokesperson Mohan Singh and general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav.
Singh said that when Jaya Prada was given a ticket to contest Lok Sabha elections from Rampur for the first time, another expelled leader Azam Khan had supported the move as she was the only person who could have defeated Congress veteran Begum Noor Bano.
"If it was wrong to give Jaya Prada the ticket for the first term, why was she nominated from the seat for the second time. It was Mulayam Singh and Ram Gopal who had cleared her name. They had signed on the papers," he said.
The expelled leader said that it had become a trend in the party where those who failed to get tickets, would put the blame on me for getting their names cancelled in favour of the one who got the ticket.