Hitting out at the ruling BJP, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Friday said had the saffron party not "wasted time" in "Sangh appeasement" by indulging in issues such as conversion, jihad and a survey of madrasas, the delay in holding the civic polls in Uttar Pradesh could have been avoided.
Addressing a meeting of the BSP office-bearers of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand at the party headquarters here, Mayawati also slammed the Congress, alleging that both the grand old party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are against reservation.
"If the intention and policy of the BJP were not to delay the Uttar Pradesh local body election and hold it in a legal manner on time, instead of wasting time in Sangh appeasement by indulging in issues like conversion, hate, jihad and a madrasa survey, it would have focused on OBC reservation in the civic polls," she was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the BSP.
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The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court quashed the Uttar Pradesh government's draft notification on the urban local body polls on Tuesday and ordered it to hold the elections without any reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
"Both the Congress and the BJP are anti-reservation parties. Together, they have made the constitutional right of reservation for the uplift of SCs (Scheduled Castes) and STs (Scheduled Tribes) almost inactive and ineffective and now, the same bad, casteist, hostile attitude is being shown with the reservation for OBCs as well.
"Because of their casteist intentions, thousands of posts reserved for them (SCs, STs and OBCs) in government departments have been lying vacant for years. Even the SP's (Samajwadi Party) thinking, policy and intentions are not right on the issue," Mayawati said.
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The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister instructed BSP leaders to travel to villages to raise awareness about the party's programmes from the start of the new year in view of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The BSP had won 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 general election in a partnership with the SP. The party had gone solo in the February-March election for the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly and managed to win only one seat.
The 2024 parliamentary polls would be a major challenge for the BSP, which ruled Uttar Pradesh for four terms in the past. Mayawati said the BJP should focus on the problems facing the country, such as poverty, unemployment and price rise.
Questioning the "roadshows" held abroad by Uttar Pradesh ministers to attract investment to the state, the BSP chief said those with an expertise in the "art of roadshows" during polls, using the money of the "ultra rich", have got a new, "costly craze" of organising such events in foreign countries on government expense.
"Just like bringing black money from abroad and distributing it among the poor, the public has now started to understand this 'eyewash' of bringing investment from abroad," she said, apparently referring to the BJP's promise in the run-up to the 2014 general election of bringing back the large sums of money allegedly siphoned off during the previous regime.
