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Rajnath launches campaign in
UP; attacks SP

Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Rajnath Singh set the Bharatiya Janata Party's election campaign in motion on Wednesday by training his guns on the Samajwadi Party.

The chief minister slammed the SP for making "false promises" and even went to the extent of charging Mulayam Singh Yadav's party for having masterminded the murder of its own Member of Parliament, Phoolan Devi.

"Haven't you seen what Phoolan Devi's sister Munni Devi has said on the television? She has openly accused them of having killed her," he said.

Singh was talking to journalists shortly before taking off to Saharanpur, where he was to offer obeisance to Goddess Durga, before proceeding on a 'rath' to herald the party's campaign for the assembly election next month.

By concentrating on the SP and not mentioning the Bahujan Samaj Party, Singh made his point clear. The BJP sees the SP as the main challenger and wants to keep the door open for a post-poll deal with the BSP, the party with which it has had two aborted alliances in the past.

He also promised to establish a "model government" in case he got the people's mandate. "Let me come back and you will see a new face of governance in the state," he proclaimed. "Corruption has been UP's bane and I propose to wage a war against it," he added.

Singh focused on four issues -- the nation's internal security, corruption, social justice and development. "Isn't it a serious matter that even as India is facing the worst onslaught of terrorist activities, some parties are opposed to the new anti-terrorism law that BJP wants to bring in," he asked, while hinting at SP.

Flaying the SP for opposing the BJP government's ban on the Students Islamic Movement of India, he said: "For the SP, the politics of vote bank is above the nation's security."

Talking about the Supreme Court's stay against the UP government's revised reservation policy, where a special allocation was made for a new category of most backward classes, the chief minister said: "We will tell the masses about how the SP was responsible for scuttling the BJP's efforts to ensure social justice to all." He accused the SP of "not looking beyond the benefit of some particular castes".

He also sought to counter Mulayam's much-hyped assurance of giving a special allowance to all unemployed youth. "If Mulayam sincerely believes in giving an unemployment allowance, then let him spell out the quantum of this allowance, and let him also state how he proposes to raise money for this," he said. "I am sure he does not even know the estimated number of unemployed youth in the state," he added.

Dubbing recently published pre-poll surveys that said the SP would emerge as the single largest party in the election as "sponsored and fudged", Singh quipped: "We cannot match the SP's resources in getting such surveys prepared."

He claimed, "I am confident that the BJP will be in majority."

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