Samajwadi Party (SP) president Mulayam Singh on Friday dismissed the “Narendra Modi factor” as media-driven and said that it would not be effective in Uttar Pradesh. “The Modi factor will neither work in Uttar Pradesh, nor in Bihar,” he said, adding that its ineffectiveness outside Gujarat was witnessed in the Karnataka Assembly polls.”
Why the Modi factor would not work in Uttar Pradesh, according to Mr. Singh, was due to the fact that “Uttar Pradesh has a distinct culture in which there is no discrimination.”
Even as he lashed out against the Gujarat Chief Minister, he attacked the Congress-led UPA government for bringing out the Food Security Ordinance in “haste.”
Accusing the Congress of playing the politics of votes as “was done in the case of MNREGA before the 2009 Lok Sabha poll,” Mr. Singh said the government should have waited for the Lok Sabha session and the Bill should have been passed after a House debate.
Predicting the Congress’s defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election “in the country and in Uttar Pradesh,” he reiterated that the Third Front would be formed after the election as “neither the Congress, nor the BJP will get majority.”
