Lucknow: On his first ever visit to Muzaffarnagar after the riots in the region last year, Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav said on Sunday that it was the SP alone that had worked for the welfare of Muslims.
Mr Yadav, while addressing an election meeting, said that the riots were unfortunate but his government had provided compensation to the victims and also jobs to their family members.
He said that he had not visited Muzaffarnagar during and after the riots because he apparently feared a backlash from the local people. Training guns at BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi over the 2002 Gujarat riots, the SP chief said that “no state had ever offered compensation to riot victims the UP government did but the Gujarat government had not”. Mr Yadav maintained that a non-BJP, non-Congress front would emerge after the elections.
