Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath on Thursday raised questions about a meeting between the father of activist Umar Khalid and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, reported PTI.

“You must have seen who recently came to meet with a party,” the chief minister said at an event in Lucknow . “Umar Khalid’s father. Umar Khalid who says ‘Bharat tere tukde honge [India, you will be divided]’. That person [Umar Khalid’s father] comes to meet the Samajwadi Party president and assures him not to worry as he was working for the Samajwadi Party.”

Khalid’s father, Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas, who is the president of Welfare Party of India, had met Yadav on October 2. The Welfare Party of India had announced support for the Samajwadi Party for the state Assembly election to be held next year.

Khalid has been lodged in a prison for over a year in connection with a case related to the violence that broke out in Delhi in February 2020.

In response to Adityanath’s comments, Samajwadi Party spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary alleged that the chief minister was trying to polarise the Assembly polls on communal lines, reported The Indian Express.

Chaudhary claimed he was not aware of any meeting between Ilyas and Yadav. “The Samajwadi Party is a socialist and democratic party,” he said. “Any person and organisation is free to meet and extend its support.”

At the event in Lucknow, Adityanath also accused the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party of destroying the social fabric of the country in the name of caste.

“But they [Congress, SP, BSP] have been pushed into history by society without hesitation,” he claimed. “This is an example before all of us.”

Adityanath alleged that these parties had sold the state to the mafia. But when the Bharatiya Janata party government came into power, the chief minister claimed that his administration ensured that the mafia rule was finished.

The chief minister also claimed that when the Samajwadi party government was in power, around 1,500 children had died of encephalitis within two months in the Gorakhpur Medical College Hospital but Yadav had never visited the medical facility to enquire about their condition.

Adityanath also criticised the Congress and said that if the party was in power when the coronavirus pandemic hit, then Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi would have fled to Italy, reported ANI.

“If there had been [a] SP government, then there would have been a competition between the uncle and the nephew [a reference to Shivpal Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav], on who would grab more not caring for the poor,” the chief minister said. “And had it come during the time of behenji [BSP chief Mayawati], only God could have saved us.”