NEW DELHI: The Congress Friday again slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for inducting a tainted former Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader in its fold and said the two parties were fooling the people of Uttar Pradesh by helping each other.
"This, it seems, is a joint strategy of the BJP and the BSP. It seems the BJP is helping the BSP in the state. They are fooling the people of Uttar Pradesh," Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters here.
Singhvi questioned the BJP's move to induct Babu Singh Kushwaha, a former Uttar Pradesh minister who is facing corruption charges in a multi-crore rural health scheme scam.
"How is the BJP going to prove its self-claimed piousness? It has itself become a joke," the Congress leader said.
Singhvi said the opposition party has taken the tainted leaders because "BJP leaders think lotus, their party symbol, grows in the mud and that's why they have embraced the mud".
The Congress spokesperson said the move exposed double standards of the BJP.
"What is the face of this party? One aspect is that the BJP leaders accuse the Mayawati government of large-scale corruption and the other is that it suited the BJP to embrace Kushwaha."