"By torpedoing the formation of a minority government by the Congress, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav, President of the Samajwadi Party, has not only betrayed the cause of Secular Unity but given a fresh lease of life to the BJP and guaranteed its heading the caretaker government till the next general election. This is no service to the cause of secularism.

Mr. Yadav has tried to reopen old wounds and equated the Congress with the BJP. This is a false and untenable equation. With all its failings, the Congress has been ideologically secular. Indeed the secular state is a gift of the Congress leadership on the eve of independence.

All secular forces and parties and a vast majority of the Indian people have an interest in the continuance of the Indian State as secular, not only the Muslim Indians. The common cause of secularism should not be communalised by projecting it as a concern of Muslim Indians only as if secularism is meant only to protect the Muslim Indians and to defend their rights, as a religious minority. Such projection weakens rather than strengthens the cause of secularism.

Mr. Yadav has opposed the Congress proposition though he was the first to call upon the Congress to take the lead and the initiative - only out of his fear and apprehension that with Congress in power, the Muslim vote, at least in UP, would slide away to the Congress.

Mr. Yadav should know that the Muslim votes of UP are not his monopoly nor are the Muslims his bonded labour, they will no longer serve as palki-bearers to take him, or anyone for that matter, to the doors of power and then be dismissed without due wages. Whether it is the SP or the BSP or the Congress or the RJD or the CPM or any other secular party, anywhere, the Muslim masses today aspire to partnership, a fair and equitable share in power, nothing more, nothing less.