His visit to the Muzaffarnagar relief camps led to an angry war of words between him and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, but Lalu Prasad continues to place the blame for the riots and the humanitarian crisis that followed squarely on the BJP-RSS, sparing the Akhilesh Yadav government.
In an interview to The Indian Express, Lalu said the communal violence in Muzaffarnagar came soon after the announcement of Narendra Modi as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, during a period when Modi's close aide Amit Shah had just taken charge of BJP's campaign in Uttar Pradesh.
Lalu Prasad. AFP
The government of Uttar Pradesh is being misinformed and misled by officials, Lalu said.
"I spoke to Akhilesh from the Loi relief camp, asked him to go to the camps himself or send someone senior to listen to the people directly. I don't know why Mulayam lashed out at me. Perhaps it is because I said I am tying up with the Congress," said the former Union minister who got bail recently after spending two months in jail after being convicted in fodder scam-related cases.
On his own political career being affected by the Congress party's u-turn on an ordinance promulgated to protect elected representatives convicted by courts, Lalu said it was not Congress vice-president Rahul who caused the turnaround, but the BJP which had originally agreed in an all-party meeting to support the ordinance but then went back on that position on the floor of the House. "Then they paraded to Rashtrapati Bhavan, claiming that it (the ordinance) was being brought in to save Lalu," he is quoted as having said.
Asked about a tie-up with the Congress for the 2014 polls, he said efforts are on to tie up with the Congress as well as the LJP of Ram Vilas Paswan.
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