Lucknow/Balrampur/New Delhi:
Samajwadi Party sources say the Congress has assured the party that controversial Union minister Beni Prasad Verma - who has been relentless in his public attacks on the SP and its chief Mulayam Yadav - will be dropped from the Union Cabinet. According to the sources, Mr Verma is likely to be dropped before the Budget Session of Parliament resumes.
In his latest attack, Mr Verma said that the SP will win "only four seats" in the coming general elections and that there will be a "funeral procession" for the party. "The party will win only four seats in the elections, and that too only because you need at least so many people to carry a body," he said yesterday while addressing a gathering of supporters at a "Holi Milan" programme in Balrampur, about 150 km from state capital Lucknow.
Mr Verma also attacked Mr Yadav's secular credentials. Recounting the 1990s, Mr Verma said, "Mulayam is not the saviour of Muslims. It was he who allowed Ashok Singhal to reach Ayodhya with a massive crowd of kar sewaks in 1990.
He even called the Yadav patriarch a closet BJP supporter and said that "Advani praised him for not supporting the Congress in 1999".
Mr Verma was once a friend of Mulayam Singh Yadav and a general secretary in the SP. He quit the party before the 2007 assembly elections after serious differences emerged between him and Mr Yadav - Mr Verma accused the SP chief of practicing dynasty politics. "I told him that I won't be anything without you. But if I cost you even ten votes then I will be very satisfied," the minister said today.
The party's chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Ramgopal Yadav, downplayed the controversy by saying that Mr Verma's anger does not deserve their attention. "He is non-existent to me. He must be important to the Congress but not to the Samajwadi Party."
Two weeks ago, the minister triggered a political furore when he accused the SP chief of having "links with terrorists".
Then, the SP had made its fury clear by disrupting Parliament repeatedly, demanding an apology from the minister and his removal from the Cabinet.
Mr Verma was reprimanded by his party following which he had said, "I am sorry if my remarks have hurt anybody's sentiments."
But soon after, he attacked Mr Yadav and his party again and said, "Those who are serving the interest of their family cannot be termed as socialists."
The UPA government relies heavily on the SP's crucial external support of 22 MPs in the Lok Sabha, especially after the DMK pulled out of the ruling alliance earlier this month. Over the past week, Mr Yadav has made several statements to indicate that he could be rethinking that support. In the recent past, he has also repeatedly told his partymen to be ready for early elections.