BJP MLAs charged with inciting Muzaffarnagar riots, felicitated at BJP rally
Three men accused of inciting deadly riots in Uttar Pradesh were treated as guests of honour today at election rallies in the western part of the state, where nearly 60 people were killed in communal violence in Muzzaffarnagar three months ago.
BJP legislators Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana were garlanded and felicitated by the party's Uttar Pradesh leaders at Narendra Modi's rally in Agra. Both men spent over a month in jail for instigating that Hindu-Muslim violence.
But the controversial legislators were honoured long before Mr Modi arrived. The party was keen to keep some distance between them and its prime ministerial candidate, who is engulfed in a controversy over whether he ordered the illegal surveillance of a young woman in Gujarat in 2009.
Some 200 km in Bareilly, Mulayam Singh Yadav, the chief of the state's ruling Samajwadi Party, and his Chief Minister son Akhilesh Yadav addressed a rally the party says was its grandest ever.
The Yadavs shared the stage with a controversial Sunni cleric named Tauqeer Raza Khan. In 2010, he was arrested by the government then headed by Mayawati for fueling riots in Bareilly, which led to two months of curfew in the city. He was also instrumental in a fatwa issued against Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen in 2007.
"In the interest of promoting secularism, Muslims must vote Mulayam and make him PM," the cleric urged the crowd.
The Samajwadi Party is dependent on the support of the state's Muslims, and has been accused by the BJP of implementing policies that are heavily tilted in their favour.
"A competition of rallies has started, but you can't match ours" said Akhilesh Yadav, not naming Mr Modi or the BJP. "The real fight is for the Lok Sabha election. You have to prepare for that. Our party will stop the communal forces."
Western Uttar Pradesh has eight of the state's 80 Lok Sabha seats, which are crucial in determining who takes power at the Centre.Three Lok Sabha seats and 26 assembly constituencies in the region are with the Samajwadi Party.