Cong charges Mulayam with ignoring constitutional norms

Lucknow, Feb 3 (UNI) Blaming the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh for ignoring the constitutional norms, Senior Congress leader and the Union Minister Akhilesh Das today said it was rather shocking that Union Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal was not allowed to enter violence-hit Gorakhpur on Thursday.

Mr Jaiswal had gone at the instance of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take stock of the situation in curfew-bound Gorakhpur but he was prevented from entering the town, he said.

The Minister of State for Home had to hold a meeting of senior officials at the aiport itself.

''It was a regrettable act on the part of the UP government which showed no respect for the constitutional norms and decency,'' the Union Minister of State for Steel Akhilesh Das told reporters at a press conference at the UP Press Club.

He said ''the Congress strongly condemns the act of the state government denying entry to the Union Minister into Gorakhpur town.'' It was not the first incident when the Samajwadi Party-led government had defied the administrative decency and constitutional propriety, he said. Adding the Mulayam Singh regime would go down as the worst ever rule in the state as far as the law and order was concerned.

Mr Das said the SP government had conspired to fuel communal tension in collusion with the BJP with an eye on the vote-bank politics. The state which has already seen the worst on the law and order front will go in shambles if such incidents took place again.

UNI