Mayawati chose grandeur, people will choose us, says Azam Khan

Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, who is contesting from Rampur city, is a busy man with street-to-street and door-to-door campaign. However, when DNA approached him, he took out time and talked about his party’s campaign.

Azam Khan ran into rough weather in 2009 when SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav favoured Amar Singh-backed Jayaprada for the Rampur Lok Sabha seat. He left the party and supported the rival Noor Bano, who lost to Jayaprada. But Khan is now back in the SP and raring to go as it were.

Excerpts:

Q: What is your assessment of the poll outcome in the state?
A: I think people are very angry with Mayawati. The Samajwadi Party may even bag a three-fourths majority.

The general assessment is that no party will get a majority.

It is the view of the electronic media in New Delhi, which is also supporting the Congress. It is sad and unfortunate. When there are just 250 people at a Rahul Gandhi meeting, they say there are lakhs of people. When the SP has a rally of 2.5 lakh people, it is not reported.

Q: What is your line of attack against Mayawati?
A: We have succeeded in making the point that the taxes collected from the people cannot be spent on statues of Mayawati and her parents. It is meant for building schools and hospitals, for building roads and colleges, on setting up industries. She has spent Rs 40,000 crore on building statues of herself, of elephants. There are 403 assembly constituencies. She could have set up sugar mills in 400 of them. Even if she had set up sugar mills just for 27 per cent Dalits, it would have been meaningful. Instead she chose Mughal pomp and grandeur. This is ‘baadshaahat’ (overlordship), dictatorship. It is misuse of people’s money.

Q: Will the Muslims vote for the Congress because of the promise of reservations?
A: The Congress is telling lies to the Muslims. They have used the word ‘minority’ which includes Jains and Buddhists. They did not use the word ‘Muslims’. Out of 27 per cent reservation for backwards and minorities, if there are 2700 vacancies in the government, there is room for just a single Muslim because Muslims will be entitled to 0.8 per cent of the reservation.

Q: What will be the impact of Rahul Gandhi?
A: He is not making any impact. That is why he is bringing in his sister Priyanka Vadra. And we will like to ask the sister about the doings of her husband, Robert Vadra. We want to ask her about the contracts that her husband undertook in the CWG and ask why is it that Suresh Kalmadi has gone to prison and not him.