Chinks in Oppn unity as Maya blames Cong for fuel price hike

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, September 13

Throwing a spanner in the works of the Opposition unity, BSP supremo Mayawati has equally blamed both the BJP and Congress for the rise in petrol and diesel prices.

Mayawati’s statement has unnerved many in the Congress, making chances of a combined fight against the BJP more like a pie in the sky.

The BSP chief’s allegation came a day after the Congress-led Bharat Bandh on skyrocketing prices of fuel was a sort of testing of waters for the Opposition unity. 

While the BSP had technically supported the bandh its leaders and cadres were conspicuous by their absence on the streets or on the media. The ambiguity did not last long as the very next day Mayawati issued a three-page press release maintaining equidistance from both the BJP and Congress.

Mayawati claimed that the BJP not only followed the Congress party’s wrong economic policies but went a step further by adding several of its own.

She said that the BJP’s demonetization imposed a sort of economic emergency and the ill-prepared step to implement GST further ruined small businesses and caused great hardship all around.

She has called upon the BJP to shed its stubborn attitude and bring both petrol and diesel back under government control and put a stop to oil companies’ arbitrary behaviour.

A Congress leader who has maintained that opposition unity was a matter of time played down Mayawati’s strident attack on the Congress saying that it appeared to be part of her strategy to put Congress on the back foot and bargain maximum seats from it during the assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

BSP supremo says NDA going UPA way

"The BJP has adopted the same faulty economic policies which made the Congress unpopular and forced people to vote it out in 2014... just like what the Congress did in case of petrol, the BJP within six months of assuming power deregulated diesel prices, which was an anti-poor, anti-labour and anti-farmer step." Mayawati, BSP Chief