by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Lucknow : BSP chief Mayawati on Friday demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the “painful and forced” demonetization he ordered two years back.
In a statement, the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister said that so far none of the benefits propagated by Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in justification of the note ban had come true.
“Facts and data prove that the nation and its people have suffered the hasty decision of demonetization and that like its other poll promises this too was a bundle of lie,” Mayawati said.
She charged the Prime Minister and the BJP with breaking the spine of the honest and hard working people and creating joblessness while helping their favourites in turning black money into white.
The BJP acquired massive property in the run up to the demonetization, Mayawati said.
A party which took power in 2014 with the promise of ‘acche din’ (good days) has done nothing for people’s welfare, farmers and the poor, she pointed out.
She termed the ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes ordered in November 2016 a result of the “ego and dictatorial attitude of a single man” — referring obviously to Modi.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Employment, Government Jobs, News, Politics
Lucknow : Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Tuesday batted for reservation in government jobs for the economically weaker upper castes and Muslims and other minorities.
She said if the Modi government brought a Bill to give 18 per cent or more reservation to the poor from the upper castes, Muslims and other minority groups, her party will be the first to support it.
Welcoming the passage of The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill, 2018 in the Lok Sabha, the four-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister also expressed hope that the Bill will sail through the Rajya Sabha comfortably.
She, however, credited the pressure built by her party and the sacrificeS of the Dalits who participated in the April 2 ‘Bharat Bandh’ for the development.
“The voice of the Dalits and the marginalised along with the BSP cadres forced the government at the Centre to bring in this Bill,” Mayawati said.
She pointed out how an NDA Minister (Ram Vilas Paswan) was forced to announce a sit-in to compel the government to act against the dilution of the SC/ST Act by the Supreme Court.
She, however, slammed other leaders of parties in the National Democratic Alliance government for keeping mum on the issue that was close to the heart of millions of Dalits.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : Notwithstanding the speculation on the durability of the new-found alliance with one-time rival BSP, Samajwadi Party chief and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav says the 23-year-old acrimony with Mayawati and her party “is a thing of past”.
“All that is irrelevant now is that both parties are walking ahead, hand in hand, to achieve a larger national objective of defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is detrimental to both the state and the nation,” Yadav said in an interview to IANS.
In a detailed interview after the stunning defeat the Samajwadi Party dealt to the BJP by trouncing it in Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha byelections, seats held earlier by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya, Yadav said that the BSP-SP combine was like a “glue which will knock the daylights off the arrogant and useless BJP government”.
The BJP, the 44-year-old leader added, would often ridicule how the opposition had no narrative to take on the saffron camp. He pointed out that with the coming together of the BSP and SP, the narrative had finally arrived.
What about the bitterness that enveloped the relations between Mayawati and his own father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, particularly after the attack on her?
“The past is past. I look ahead. Mayawatiji has set the record straight that when this incident happened I was nowhere in politics and hence I cannot be drawn into the slugfest.”
Dropping enough hints that the BSP-SP bonhomie would continue till the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will seek another term for his government, the former Chief Minister said his party already had the development plank and now what it was doing was to emulate the BJP in micro-booth and caste management.
Asked about the mercurial nature of the Dalit diva Mayawati, he said that time changes people.
“Seat sharing are small things and they will be sorted out at the time it is needed. We will cross the bridge when we come to it.”
Akhilesh Yadav said he was now doing what the BJP had taught them.
“They talk of panna pramukhs, understanding and adjusting the caste matrix and focussing on booth management. Now when we do it, we are accused of being casteist… How can it be win-win for the BJP?”
After the Lok Sabha byelection victories, Akhilesh Yadav drove to Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati’s residence for a 30-minute meeting.
He said Mayawati was warm and bore no signs of rivalry or bitterness. “She was welcoming. She took me on a pictorial tour of her journey from a commoner to being Chief Minister four times of the country’s most populous state.”
Akhilesh Yadav accused the Yogi Adityanath government of doing nothing in Uttar Pradesh in the past one year as compared to the “exemplary development” under his watch.
“The only thing the BJP government has done in the past one year is to cut ribbons of projects that were initiated by the SP government.”
Getting philosophical, he recounted how having studied in a military school at Dhaulpur in Rajasthan and later in Bengaluru, he had forgotten he was a backward-caste person.
“I almost forgot it until the BJP reminded me of my backward caste DNA. I am thankful to them for doing so. I would like to say that I may be born in a backward family, but I am a forward looking person who is progressive, has a vision and is growth-oriented.”
He listed many failures of the state government while calling the BJP confused and jittery.
He pointed out how they were trying desperately to find an answer to the coming together of the BSP and SP.
Asked if he planned for more parties to join them in a grand alliance, he said: “As of now it is just UP and the BSP-SP together.” His relationships with the Congress, he said, were normal and cordial.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : As the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government completed one year in power in India’s most populous state, the jury is still out on its performance.
While the party stormed back to power with a brute majority after 14 years in power, its loss in the recent bypolls to seats earlier held by the Chief Minister and his deputy have taken off some sheen from their celebration.
Adityanath and his team say that the government has done what was never even conceived of in the last decade and a half of the rule of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP), which according to him bequeathed “empty coffers, a state where criminals were having a free run and the bureaucracy was non-performing”.
The saffron-clad monk-politician stresses he has been working 18 hours a day to bring back on track the state, which he says, had been turned ‘bimaru’ by political powers who “never looked beyond gains for self, the party and their own families”.
The 45-year-old, who was picked to head the government by his Bharatiya Janata Party’s national leadership despite his hardcore Hindutva credentials, is still caustic in his public speeches against his rivals and openly brandishes his Hindu image that has won him support from many in the community in and outside the state but who raises suspicion in the minds of the minority.
Soon after taking over the reins of the state on March 19, 2017, Aditynanath, who is the sitting priest of the Gorakshnath Peeth in Gorakhpur, ordered a crackdown on the “illegal slaughterhouses in the state”, triggering a tizzy in the butcher community among the Muslims.
Hundreds of slaughter houses were closed down within days as raids were conducted by municipal bodies, who had incidentally certified their operations earlier.
Adityanath is unapologetic about his pro-Hindu image and has, apart from his public speeches and media interactions, brandished it on the floor of the UP assembly, saying he is proud to be a Hindu and will never celebrate Eid.
“I will however allow every community to celebrate their festivals if they want to do so peacefully,” he told the assembly, to the criticism from the opposition benches.
Leader of Opposition Ram Govind Chowdhary, of the Samajwadi Party, accuses Adityanath of behaving as if the opposition were terrorists.
Other than his tough language and image, the Chief Minister has also been the target of opposition attack for his frequent visits (almost weekly) to his temple in Gorakhpur with many of them alleging that his interest still seems to be propitiating gods than serving the people.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati who vanquished the BJP candidates in Phulpur and Gorakhpur by tactically and smartly extending her party’s vote to arch rival Samajwadi Party, says there is no reason for the BJP to celebrate its one-year rule as in the period, it had destroyed the social and communal fabric of the state.
“How can they celebrate when they have not achieved anything. The by polls results have emphatically shown that the people have given them a big zero for the one year report card,” she said in a statement. She further accuses Adityanath of being only busy with “puja-paath” whereas the biggest dharma was serving people.
Akhilesh Yadav too gives a thumbs down to the BJP government. “The only thing the Chief Minister and his government have done in the past one year is to remove names of the Samajwadi Party from government schemes”. He also slams the language used by Adityanath.
Aam Aadmi party (SSP) spokesman Vaibhav Maheshwari slams the Adityanath government by saying that “it still has not got out of the ‘jumlebaazi’ mode propounded by BJP chief Amit Shah”.
Ajay Kumar ‘Lallu’, leader of the Congress legislature party in the assembly, termed it a “failed and eye wash government” which is trying to mislead people by tall promises to hide their failures. “The farmers are on the brink, youth yet to get employment, power tariffs are up drastically…what have they done except fish out new tricks to befool people” he said.
State Health Minister and government spokesman Siddhartha Nath Singh, however trashed the allegations of the opposition and told IANS that they were shaken with the “path-breaking work” down by the government”. “We have constructed 37 lakh toilets for the poor, waived off loans worth Rs 36,000 crore of 86 lakh farmers, hounded out criminals. brought the health and education sector back on tracks, investors are making beeline to invest in the state…if this is not progress, what is?” he asks.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
