Cong will suffer due to Beni's remarks: SP

Verma said party would win only four seats in the next Lok Sabha polls and there would be a "funeral procession for the party"

Reacting sharply to Union Minister Beni Prasad Verma's remark on its poll prospects, Samajwadi Party (SP) today said Congress would suffer due to such “baseless” statements and demanded his removal from the Union ministry.

Talking about the poll prospects of various parties in Uttar Pradesh, Beni had said yesterday that Mulayam Singh Yadav’s party would win only four seats in the next Lok Sabha polls and there would be a “funeral procession for the party”.

Flaying the Congress leader's statement, SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary told PTI, “He has stooped down too low and is making baseless statements which are far from truth.”

He noted that Beni’s son had lost his security deposit in Barabanki, and he too had lost his deposit in Faizabad in the last elections. “He will be nowhere in the next Lok Sabha elections, and Congress will have to suffer due to such a baseless statement,” he said, adding, “He is an ungrateful person. Initially, he was just a worker of netaji (Mulayam).”

SP general secretary Ram Asrey Kushwaha said, “He (Beni) has lost his mental balance.”

He said that as per Beni’s calculation, all parties combined would get 90 seats, whereas there are only 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.

“The media and people should not take cognisance of his statement,” Kushwaha said while demanding removal of Beni from the Union ministry.

He said that it was “unfortunate” that a person like him was made a minister. This is not the first time that the union steel minister has ruffled SP’s feathers. Beni had recently triggered a storm by alleging that the SP supremo had “terrorist links” leading to calls for his removal from the ministry.