New Delhi:
Union minister Beni Prasad Verma has threatened to quit the Congress party if he's ordered to stop the invective he has been barraging on Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose support is crucial for the government's survival.
On Tuesday, the minister said that Mr Yadav, who heads the Samajwadi Party, is not qualified to get "even a sweeper's job at the Prime Minister's residence."
The Congress said he had been reprimanded. Mr Verma said today the admonition left him "humiliated."
"I believe in values...I can quit Congress any time or it can remove me...I can tender my resignation if Congress becomes an obstacle in my fight with Yadav," he said.
Today, sources in the Congress said that attacks on the Samajwadi Party or its government in Uttar Pradesh are acceptable, as long as they are free of personal slurs.
Mr Verma's career advice for its chief did not provoke a strong reaction from the Samajwadi Party, which dismissed the minister as "an insane man".
That was in sharp contrast to earlier this year, when it demanded that the minister be sacked for declaring - again in public -that Mr Yadav has terrorist links. Mr Verma offered no compunction till the Prime Minister intervened, after which the minister said, in a way that suggested he may not entirely have meant it, that he regretted his remark.
The Samajwadi Party's 22 Lok Sabha parliamentarians are indispensable for the Prime Minister's minority government, which is desperate for Parliament to clear important legislation including new economic reforms.
Mr Verma was a member of the Samajwadi Party till 2007, and was considered a close aide to Mr Yadv. He joined the Congress in 2009, and was inducted into the cabinet as India's steel minister in July 2011.