Samajwadi Party

Rampur (Uttar Pradesh), May 8 (PTI) The unease in the
Samajwadi Party following the widening rift between two senior
leaders flared up with Amar Singh virtually threatening to
quit the outfit if its chief Mulayam Singh Yadav does not rein
in Azam Khan, who showed no signs of piping down.

Yadav on his part ticked off Khan saying his behaviour
is "unfair".

"He (Khan) has been continuously speaking against Amar
Singh and also Kalyan Singh. His tirade against both is
unfair," Yadav said Friday, adding he will step in and thrash
out the differences after the elections.

Singh, who was addressing an election meeting here
Thursday night in support of sitting MP Jayaprada, the cause
for Khan's tussle with the party leadership, said he would
decide over continuing in the party after the end of the final
phase of the Lok Sabha polls.

Referring to Yadav's statement that "if you want to
remain in the party, you will have to keep Azam Khan happy",
Singh said, "Azam Khan is a favourite of Mulayam Singhji
and inspite of his (Khan's) intolerable utterances against
me, I was being asked to keep silent."

But Khan, who has been carrying on a campaign against
the candidature of Jayaprada, was unrelenting in his attack on
Amar Singh though the criticism was veiled.

The clash in the SP over Jayaprada's candidature from
Rampur also spilled into the streets when the cavalcade of
Samajwadi Party leader Abu Hashim Azmi was attacked and three
vehicles were damaged by a mob in Rampur district.

Azmi alleged that Khan's men were responsible for the
attack on his convoy.

Khan has openly opposed Jayaprada's renomination and
also said she was a good actress and a dancer but that did not
not necessarily make her a good MP.

Khan took strong exception to Singh's statements
targeting him saying it was laced with threats against him.

"Amar Singh threatened that he would become the third eye
of Lord Shiva and destroy Azam Khan and this clearly means
that he means ill...as it could either be my political
destruction or physical one or both", Azam Khan told PTI.

"Use of such a derogatory and indignified language in
politics is deplorable also suggests that whatever he is
aiming for is below the belt", Khan said adding that there was
a clear threat to him and his family in his speech.

At the rally, Singh said, "Mulayam Singh Yadav is my
leader, my elder brother and national president. It is his
order to me that if I have to stay in Samajwadi Party, I have
to bear with Azam Khan." He maintained that he has been told,
"You don't have to say anything, keep absolutely quiet.

"But today I am disobeying this order publicly. And I am
doing this because there is a limit to how much one can bear,"
the SP General Secretary said.

Khan, who has also been angry over SP's tie up with
former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, said he and Yadav formed
the party's two foundation pillars and he wanted to save it
from being ruined. PTI TEAM
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