Launching a scathing attack on the Samajwadi Party, the Uttar Pradesh BJP has tweeted a video naming party chief Akhilesh Yadav and criticising him for “supporting Samajwadi Party leaders who have a Talibani mindset”. 

The 2-minute video has recent scenes from Afghanistan, mainly of the chaos at Kabul airport amid evacuations after the Taliban takeover. A Hindi voiceover in the video accuses SP leaders of backing those who are inclined to the Taliban ideology.

“Taliban is destroying Afghanistan which is battered by war, violence and barbarism and this mindset is supported by leaders of Akhilesh Yadav’s party,” the voiceover in the video says.

The video attack by the BJP comes days after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath brought up the issue of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and blamed a “section of people” for supporting the terror group in India without naming any party.

“People are supporting the Taliban. Look at the kind of barbarism being meted out to women there, to children in Afghanistan. Yet some people are shamelessly supporting the Taliban. These people should be exposed before society,” Yogi Adityanath had said in his address at the Uttar Pradesh assembly on August 19.

The chief minister had made the remarks after a sedition case was filed against a Samajwadi Party MP and two others in Sambhal district over comments that seemed to compare the Taliban to India’s freedom fighters.

On August 18, Samajwadi Party leader Shafiqur Rahman Barq – the Lok Sabha MP from Sambhal – told reporters that the Taliban “want Afghanistan to be free” and “want to run their own country”.

“They want to be free. This is their personal matter. How can we interfere?” he was quoted as saying by news agency PTI. He also said when India was occupied by the British, “the entire country fought for independence”, PTI reported.