Mayawati dubs Congress-Samajwadi ties 'opportunistic'

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati Friday dubbed the new-found friendship between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress over the India-US nuclear deal "an opportunistic alliance".

She told reporters in Lucknow that Samajwadi Party leader and former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav was acting to protect his self-interest by shoring up the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while saying publicly that he was committed to national interest.

Yadav was "neither for the interest of the nation nor the Muslims but only for his family and close friends", the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief asserted.

"The understanding between the two parties is for personal vested interests, devoid of any ideological commitment," she said. "This is why Mulayam is enacting this drama for the last two days in Delhi.

"The people of the country will give them a befitting reply in the Lok Sabha elections," she added.

Mayawati made the comments shortly after Mulayam Singh and Samajwadi Party genral secretary Amar Singh met Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and offered their support to the beleaguered ruling coalition and the nuclear deal.

Mayawati said that for the sake of the nuclear deal, the "Congress was striking a deal with a party whose leader's face it did not want to see at one time".

Mayawati said she had heard from sources that the Samajwadi Party would not immediately join a Congress-led government but back it from the outside to make up for the Left withdrawal of support.

She added that the nuclear deal had run into controversy because the central government did not take the people of the country into confidence.

Mayawati said the government should have called an all-party meeting and arrived at a consensus instead of giving out information about the nuclear deal in bits and pieces.

The chief minister said not just the nuclear deal, no international agreement should be such that "it hurts the sentiments of people of any religion.

"We don't wish such nuclear energy by which the country becomes the slave of a foreign country once again," Mayawati said.