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Congress leaders on Wednesday ridiculed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's decision to rename Amethi parliamentary constituency after Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj.
Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, a late nineteenth century king of Kolhapur in Maharashtra, is a popular BSP icon. Shahu is believed to have been the first in India to introduce job reservations for dalits and other backward communities.
Party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi told rediff.com, "Gimmicks like renaming a constituency cannot take the place of substance. The people of Amethi know very well who their real well-wisher is and who has done concrete development work for the constituency." He said that Mayawati is substituting gimmickry for hard work.
Singhvi said that the chief minister had been rattled by the visit of Priyanka Vadra, daughter of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, to Amethi and helping a dalit, whose community Mayawati regards as her exclusive constituency.
Since Amethi is Gandhi's parliamentary constituency and her stronghold, Mayawati struck upon the concept of renaming it so that she could attract the dalit votes within it, according to former Rajya Sabha parliamentarian Wasim Ahmed
Congress MP from Bihar's Aurangabad parliamentary constituency Shyama Singh ridiculed the chief minister's move to extort political mileage by using her position to rename Sonia's constituency.
"We will ensure that the people are not misled by this ill-directed attempt by the chief minister to usurp the Congress party's bastion in Uttar Pradesh," Singh added.
Party Lok Sabha MP from Solapur Sushil Kumar Shinde pointed out that "Mayawati is merely building monuments in memory of dalit heavyweights, but she is ignoring the hunger and poverty among the community."
"Unless the chief minister proves that she has genuine concern for the dalits, all her purported move for their welfare will be perceived as a charade," Shinde asserted.
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