Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Saturday said that those seen at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's roadshow in Varanasi were "mere spectators" brought in from other states and districts in Uttar Pradesh where voting had already taken place.
The inimitable 52-year old dalit leader who had already got two imposing statues of herself installed in Lucknow, has now decided to "gift" three more of her statues to the state capital.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati celebrated her 54th birthday on Friday, but without the trademark pomp, splendour and ostentatious celebrations. Instead, the CM surprised many by announcing welfare programmes for the poor and development schemes worth over Rs 7,300 crore for the state.Her earlier birthdays were celebrated as arthik sahyog diwas (fund raising day) when her partymen allegedly indulged in blatant extortion.
GMR evinces interest in the project.
Congress leaders Digvijay Singh, Sachin Pilot and Rita Bahuguna Joshi were arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police at the Delhi border on Tuesday, when they were going towards state Chief Minister Mayawati's village to protest against the 'coercive' acquisition of land.The leaders were prevented at the Delhi-UP border by the UP police from going towards Badalpur, the village of Mayawati, where the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee has organised a 'Kisan Sangharsh Rally'.
Bahujan Samaj Party president and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati will seek re-entry into the state's Upper House of Legislature.
The Lok Sabha was adjourned till 2 pm by Speaker Somnath Chatterjee after angry members of the Bahujan Samaj Party continued to interrupt Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi's speech during the trust vote debate on Tuesday.Gandhi, who started his speech by saying, " I am not going to speak as the leader of a political party but as an Indian," was repeatedly interrupted by noisy protests from the Opposition benches.
Tall claims about her government's achievements and heavy bashing of the Congress-led UPA regime at the Centre remained Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's mainstay at a press meet in Lucknow on Thursday to mark completion of her three years in office.
With as many as 6,500 cops already sacked and many more to follow, UP Chief Minister Mayawati is going hammer and tongs to restore order and bring down the crime rate here.
Training her guns on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati was extremely critical of President Pratibha Patil's address to the joint sitting of parliament in New Delhi on Thursday.
Accusing Jairam of making a mountain out of a molehill, she has sought to draw the prime minister's attention to the minister's bid to generalise some information.
The official birthday celebrations would commence at 10 am with the inauguration of Ambedkar Auditorium, which would be followed by unveiling of plaques of various welfare schemes and development projects worth Rs 4000 crore by the chief minister.
"Whatever rights Dalits and backwards had is due to Bhim Rao Ambedkar and there is no contribution of the Nehru-Gandhi family," Mayawati said while addressing a gathering after inaugurating the 'Bhim Rao Ambedkar Samajik Parivartan Sthal' in Lucknow. She alleged that 'Congress and company' had conspired against Ambedkar so that he could not become a member of the Constituent Assembly.
The Uttar Pradesh government has started proceedings to withdraw four cases against senior cabinet minister Mohammad Azam Khan. "The cases against Khan in 2007 appeared to be lodged with bad intentions. We have given applications in concerned courts to withdraw the cases," said Principal Secretary, Home, R M Srivastava.
The opposition parties on Sunday slammed the move to hire public servants through lateral entry, claiming it will snatch reservations from SCs, STs and OBCs, but the Bharatiya Janata Party hit back stating the National Democratic Alliance government was bringing transparency to this mode of recruitment started by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.
In both of these Hindi heartland states, the straight contest between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress.
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati supported Centre's food security scheme but disapproved of its step to bring an ordinance, saying the measure should have been discussed in Parliament and passed with consensus.
Come January 15 and it is not unusual for Bahujan Samaj Party president and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati to show her paranoia invariably on account of the perennial accusation that the collection of money for her birthday 'gift', more often than not, culminates into extortion.
In a veiled reference to reports that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had rescued 15,000 Gujaratis from Uttarakhand, former Uttar Pradesh CM Mayawati on Sunday said the Bahujan Samaj Party condemns a political party whose leader seeks to become a prime ministerial candidate but talks about saving people only from his own state.
Holding non-Congress governments responsible for lack of development in Uttar Pradesh in the last 22 years, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said only Congress, led by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, can change this "bad situation" and provide good governance in the state.
In a desperate bid to give herself a clean-chit and clear herself of the charge that the engineer lost his life for refusing to concede the MLA's demand for money required to fill the coffers for Mayawati's birthday celebrations on January 15, she also hit out at the opposition for maligning her.
'Everybody knows Mayawati sells party tickets and even her party members take pride in telling this'
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday that Uttar Pradesh is a "victim of short sighted politics" but refrained from blaming its Chief Minister Mayawati for it.
She also attacked the "fashion" among politicians of visiting temples during the poll campaign and said the Election Commission should take note.
In an exclusive interview to CNN-IBN's National Bureau Chief Bhupendra Chaubey, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati talks about her party's prospects in the assembly elections.
"The government will establish an Arabic-Persian university in state capital Lucknow and we have allocated Rs 10 crore for the purpose. Besides, the number of madrasas on government grant-list will also be increased from 360 to 460," Mayawati said, addressing a national convention on the 'Problems of Muslim Community: Reasons and Solutions' in Lucknow.
Banda chief judicial magistrate Bhagwan Das Gupta appointed Garima Singh, additional chief judicial magistrate (MP-MLA Court Banda) as the investigating officer in the case, the official said.
In a bid to project a non-partisan face, Anna Hazare and his team on Sunday shot off a series of letters to leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi and Bharatiya Janata Party President Nitin Gadkari, trying to put them on the mat on the Lokpal issue ahead of Assembly polls in five states.
"I expect the Bahujan Samaj Party under my leadership to take charge of governance in India," she said in an interview to Hong Kong-based CFO Asia magazine.
Mayawati said she would announce her party's stand in New Delhi on Tuesday.
With the Uttar Pradesh police under fire for having allegedly botched up investigations into the murder of Aarushi and the Talwar family's domestic help Hemraj, three senior police officials who were involved in the probe were shunted out with immediate effect.
'Modi 3.0 will have more balanced policies like one saw in Modi's first term.'
The Uttar Pradesh chief minister also suspended the director general of Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department, which has been investigating the case.
The National Election Watch has put out a report pertaining the chief ministers of the five states going to polls -- Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.
As if Rs 6,000 crores already spent was not enough, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Friday told the state assembly that all the memorials and statues erected by her in Lucknow and in Noida would not put any further drain on the state exchequer.
In the recent past, Adityanath and the RSS seem to have come closer. The warmth is more on the part of the RSS. And even now, not all requests from the RSS are accommodated by the UP government, points out Aditi Phadnis.
The BJP had registered a one-sided victory on all the 17 SC-reserved seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. But in 2019, out of these 17 seats, it lost Nagina and Lalganj seats to the Bahujan Samaj Party.
In an obvious bid to settle her scores with the Centre, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Tuesday got FIRs lodged against two Union ministers and two Uttar Pradesh Congress leaders for bashing up activists of Samajwadi Party near the venue of Rahul Gandhi's campaign rally in Phoolpur on Monday.
A full majority might be difficult, but Mayawati is in a commanding position this time.
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