SP chief Akhilesh Yadav (left) and UP CM Yogi Adityanath.
Credit: PTI File Photos
Lucknow: On the defensive after losing its traditional stronghold of Faizabad seat of which Ayodhya is a part, in the recent Lok Sabha polls to arch rival Samajwadi Party (SP), the BJP plans to make the alleged gang-rape of a minor by an SP leader a major issue in the upcoming assembly by-polls on ten seats in Uttar Pradesh.
The saffron party also plans to corner the SP, especially its Faizabad MP Awadhesh Prasad, who has emerged as the new poster boy of the party, after he inflicted one of the most humiliating defeats on the BJP.
The minor victim, who hailed from the OBC community and was reported to be two months pregnant, was on Monday shifted to the KG Medical College University in the state capital from Ayodhya for specialised treatment.
It was alleged that Khan and his aide gang-raped the victim, who worked as a labourer, several times over the past two months.
BJP went on the offensive immediately after the matter came to light. UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath met the mother of the victim and later a minister and thereafter a BJP delegation also visited the victim’s family and assured them that justice would be done.
Acting swiftly, the accused, identified as Moid Khan, was arrested and one of his hotels and a bakery shop were also demolished with bulldozers. Khan’s aide Raju, who too was an accused in the matter, was also arrested.
While Awadhesh Prasad has demanded stern punishment for the accused persons, SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s demand for a DNA test of the accused triggered a backlash from the BJP leaders who accused him of trying to defend Khan.
BJP leaders also put up a hoarding in the state capital containing the remarks, though altered a bit, by SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav over incidents of rapes that ‘’boys are boys, they do make mistakes’’.
‘’The SP had coined the slogan PDA (pichda, dalit, aalpsankhyak) in the LS polls but now its leaders are silent when a ‘pichad’ girl has been raped by a Muslim,’’ said senior BJP leader Vijay Bahadaur Pathak here.
Sources said that the BJP planned to use the Ayodhya gang-rape incident to ‘puncture’ SP’s PDA formula in the upcoming assembly by-polls.
SP had won 37 seats in the state in the recent LS polls while BJP suffered a huge setback and would win only 33 seats as against 62 in the 2019 LS elections.