Congress leader calls Mulayam a BJP agent, yet again

New Delhi, Sept 16:

leader Rashid Alvi, who was reprimanded by his party earlier for describing

as biggest agent of

, on Saturday launched a scathing attack against the SP chief asking him to "disclose what had transpired" in his meeting with VHP chief last month.

"Mulayam Singh Yadav is strengthening the hands of BJP. The communal riots that have happened in western UP have now proved right what I said one year back. Mulayam Singh and BJP are together and this is amply proved by the incidents that have taken place now," Alvi told PTI.

Addressing a public meeting at Moradabad in June last year during a campaign for municipal corporation elections, Alvi, then a spokesperson of Congress, had said, "I have been saying it for the last 10 years that if there is anybody who is the biggest agent of BJP, it is Mulayam Singh Yadav. If anybody dances to the tunes of BJP, it is Mulayam Singh Yadav."

Congress had immediately disowned Alvi's remarks at a time when the party was seeking support of many parties for its presidential nominee Pranab Mukherjee.

Last year, the Congress had reprimanded Alvi for his anti-Mulayam remarks

Alvi was dropped as Congress spokesperson in May this year. He had earlier failed to get a re-nomination for Rajya Sabha after his term from Andhra Pradesh expired in April 2012. Before joining Congress, he was in the BSP.

The former Congress MP demanded, "Yadav should disclose before the country what had transpired in his one-hour long meeting with Ashok Singhal before the VHP decided to go ahead with its yatra in UP last month."

When the SP government later put a ban on the Yatra, Singhal had expressed surprise saying that the Parishad had shared its plans to take out a low-key yatra with the SP chief and his chief minister son earlier.

SP leader Azam Khan had then said that Yadav's meeting with Singhal will send a wrong signal.

Alvi said that the SP "deliberately opposed the Yatra after giving a nod earlier to create tension" between the two communities.

PTI