Samajwadi Party (SP) leader and former Uttar Pradesh chief-minister Akhilesh Yadav has termed the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre as the ‘single-largest’ threat to the survival of Indian democracy.

Addressing party cadres at the party’s headquarters in Lucknow, Akhilesh (son of former chief-minister and SP president Mulayam Singh Yadav) told them to beware of the BJP which posed a huge ‘danger’ to the society. “BJP’s plan is to divide people along religious lines and garner their votes.  By doing so, it has only managed to successfully divert people benefiting from the Centre’s developmental schemes.

“Farmers commit suicide, youths are in quest of the elusive employment, merchants are faced with plenty of problems: everything happens when the BJP rules (at the State and the Centre),” said the Jr. Yadav who urged all the opposition parties in the country to come under a common umbrella with a single-point agenda of defeating the BJP and keeping it out of power when the Lok Sabha polls are held next year.

“Saffron’s surge has to be arrested for the long-term benefit of the country,” Yadav said.  Recent Lok Sabha by-poll reverses in Uttar Pradesh have hugely disappointed the BJP’s high-command which has started comparing their political adversaries to animals out of sheer desperation,” Yadav concluded.