BJP MLAs charged with inciting Muzaffarnagar riots, felicitated at BJP rally
Three men accused of inciting deadly riots in Uttar Pradesh were treated as guests of honour today at election rallies in the western part of the state, where nearly 60 people were killed in communal violence in Muzaffarnagar three months ago.
BJP legislators Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana were garlanded by the party's state leaders at
Narendra Modi's rally in Agra. Both men spent over a month in jail for instigating that Hindu-Muslim violence.
They were removed from the stage before Mr Modi arrived, an attempt by the party to allow its main man some distance from the controversial legislators.
Some 200 kilometres away in Bareilly, Mulayam Singh Yadav, the chief of the state's ruling Samajwadi Party, and his Chief Minister son Akhilesh Yadav shared their stage with a controversial Sunni cleric named Tauqeer Raza Khan.
In 2010, he was arrested by the government, then headed by Mayawati, for fueling riots in Bareilly, which forced a two-month curfew in the city.
"In the interest of promoting secularism, Muslims must vote Mulayam and make him PM," the cleric urged the crowd.
The Samajwadi Party is dependent on the support of the state's Muslims, and has been accused by the BJP of implementing policies that are heavily tilted in their favour.
"A competition of rallies has started, but you can't match ours," said Akhilesh Yadav, not naming Mr Modi or the BJP. "The real fight is for the Lok Sabha election. You have to prepare for that. Our party will stop the communal forces."