Samajwadi party president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav today took a swipe at the Congress, insisting that he wasn’t worried about a CBI probe against him because his family had gone through such a probe when the Congress-led UPA was in power.
There has been speculation that the CBI may launch an investigation against former Akhilesh as part of its probe into the sand mining scam in 2012-2013. Akhilesh was the CM and mining minister during that time. The CBI raided 14 locations across Delhi and Uttar Pradesh last Saturday
“A CBI probe will not be not be the first time for us. It happened once against all of us — Netaji, Dimple and me. It happened in Congress’ time. We are thankful to Congress because of that experience all our paperwork were in place and maintained,” Akhilesh said while speaking in Lucknow at #ChaupalOnTwitter
The Yadavs emerged unscathed in the earlier CBI probe that began in 2007 where Mulayam Singh Yadav was investigated for alleged disproportionate assets. In September 2016, the Supreme Court dismissed a fresh plea seeking another CBI probe into Mulayam’s assets. He was then the Samajwadi Party chief.
Akhilesh also poked fun at a possible CBI probe. “From time to time probe should happen, it helps in updating papers, documentation, and helps in preventing mistakes. All of us are ready to be questioned. Question us asap so that now we can get busy with polls.”
He accused the BJP-led NDA of forming an ‘alliance’ with the CBI and using the institution like many others.
“And who will carry out the CBI’s probe? There is so much infighting in the CBI,” he said.
The SP chief also put Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his line of fire, calling him ‘confused’. “We have never seen such a confused prime minister ever. Be it demonetisation or GST, what came out of it? Nothing. And they call someone else ‘accidental pm’.”
After tying up with the Congress for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections where both the SP and the Congress got a drubbing, Akhilesh had been warming up to Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The two leaders are expected to announce the alliance to take on the BJP for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Lucknow on Saturday.
Akhilesh and Mayawati have so far ruled out Congress as a partner of the alliance, because the grand old party is looking at contesting more than a dozen seats, which the SP and the BSP are not ready to concede, said another leader familiar with negotiations.
In a recent meeting in Delhi, Akhilesh and Mayawati discussed the modalities of seat sharing for the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, according to sources.
The talks, sources said, did not account for the Congress. It was proposed that both parties will equally distribute between them 78 Lok Sabha seats. They won’t field candidates in Amethi and Rae Bareli, the Lok Sabha constituencies of Congress president Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi, respectively, sources added.
First Published: Jan 11, 2019 14:34 IST
Source: HindustanTimes