‘Akhilesh-Vakhilesh', ‘Kamal in name’: Congress, SP trade barbs amid Madhya Pradesh election tie-up row
Are bhai chhodo Akhilesh-Vakhilesh (Oh brother, lets leave Akhilesh-Vakhilesh)". The kind of reference which Nath made towards Akhilesh Yadav, the chief of SP, did not go down well with the latter's party. Senior SP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Ram Gopal Yadav, on being asked by mediapersons about Nath's statement, was visibly anguished by the remarks.
“I don't want to say anything. They are 'Chhutbhaiya' (small) leaders," news agency ANI quoted him as saying. Yadav himself also weighed in on the controversy, with a sarcastic remark.
“His (Nath) name is so nice. Whose name has 'kamal' they will call Vakhilesh only and not Akhilesh," the SP president said, while speaking to reporters in Uttar Pradesh's Hardoi. Political observers said he was apparently linking Nath's first name ‘Kamal’ with the electoral symbol of lotus used by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“He said this right, that who is Wakhilesh? Akhilesh is there. If they say these kinds of things then Samajwadi Party can also say, but we don't want to indulge in this," Yadav further added. The 230 assembly seats of Madhya Pradesh will be contested in a single phase election slated for November 17.
The SP, which initially appeared keen for an electoral pact with the Congress, has went ahead to release its separate list of candidates. The party has named 33 candidates so far. In the last Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, the SP had contested without an alliance with the Congress, and won two Assembly seats.
The Congess had formed the government after emerging as the single-largest party with 114 seats. However, the party lost close to two dozen MLAs in March 2020, leading to the government's fall. Addressing the press in Uttar Pradesh's Shahjahanpur on October
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