LUCKNOW, 30 April 2007 — Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh yesterday appealed to voters in Uttar Pradesh to vote for the Congress party and to throw out a corrupt and inefficient government led by Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Deshmukh blamed Mulayam and Mayawati for the backwardness of the northern state. Addressing an election rally in Mirzapur district, Deshmukh said “Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam and BSP supremo Mayawati were responsible for the backwardness of Uttar Pradesh.”
Deshmukh while making comparisons between his own state, Maharashtra and UP, said that both states had equal population growth, but on developmental fronts there was a huge difference between them.
Calling Mulayam’s claim of making UP the best state in the country a blatant lie, Deshmukh said that the ground reality was just the opposite because the “state’s over-all condition had deteriorated during Mulayam’s rule with no power, no water, and no development at all.”
“The law and order situation in UP had completely collapsed. The SP government has failed to provide security to the people. There is mafia rule and people are not feeling unsafe in the state,” Deshmukh said. He also appealed to the people to overthrow the government and bring in Congress to take the state to a new level.
Responding to the attack by Deshmukh, Mulayam, at a rally in Varnasi trained his guns on the Congress party and said that “Congress had no base and was finished in Uttar Pradesh.”
“Congress is nowhere today, it is finished not only in UP, it has also lost its base in Punjab, Bihar, Uttarakhand and even in Maharashtra,” Mulayam said.
