By IANS
Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati Wednesday celebrated the completion of her 100 days in office, even as critics saw a virtual return of the feudal cult at a grand celebration event.
Amid unprecedented security at the Ganna Sansthan auditorium, officials joined leaders of her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in singing her praise during the two and a half hour event.
Barring BSP’s Brahmin leader Satish Misra, all other senior leaders and ministers on the dais made it a point to touch her feet while top officers of her personal secretariat lined up to offer her bouquets.
A senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the rank of a divisional commissioner doled out poetic praises of the chief minister.
A 20-member team of the Uttar Pradesh Police Special Task Force (STF) was rewarded on the occasion. Mayawati gave each of the daredevils a cash reward of Rs.300,000 with a citation. The non-gazetted officers got out-of-turn promotion while the gazetted officers received a revolver as a special memento.
Mayawati’s 50-minute speech enumerated her long list of achievements, but it was not followed by a question-hour session as in the past.
The 550-seat hall was packed to capacity as all senior bureaucrats and senior police officials turned up to join the celebrations.
Several BSP legislators who came late had to remain standing in the isle. But that only prompted Mayawati to declare: “We need to have a bigger auditorium in Lucknow. I will very soon get one built with at least five times the capacity of this hall.”
The day also saw a massive publicity blitz – trumpeting the Mayawati government’s achievements – that dominated newspapers and seemingly the skyline too with larger-than-life hoardings.
Many national dailies – some with a distinctly different Mayawati clad in a silk sari, bejewelled and carefully coiffeured – and virtually all state newspapers carried huge advertisements listing the government’s “unparalleled achievements”.
Besides, for added visual impact were tens of thousands of hoardings put up across this sprawling state to impress.
The motto was “Sarvajan Hitaya, Sarvajan Sukhaya” (For benefit of all, For happiness of all), and the message covered everything from agriculture policy to roads but focussed on the improvement in law and order.
At the special function, Mayawati rolled out the numbers – 74 percent decline in kidnapping, 46 percent in robbery, 36 percent in dacoity, 28 percent in rioting, 24 percent in rape, 20 percent in murder and 20 percent in vehicle theft over the corresponding period last year.
The gunning down of bandit Shiv Kumar Patel, better known as Dadua, by STF was shown as another feather in her cap. The bandit was synonymous with terror in vast areas along the Uttar Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh border for three decades.
According to the chief minister: “Effective action has been taken against 948 of the listed 1,452 mafia gangs while possession was restored to 49,000 of the 69,000 deprived allottees of government land in villages.”
Reservation in allocation of key police appointments and filling the backlog of 16,637 vacancies against reserved posts in other departments were listed too.
“Reservation of 23 percent posts of SHOs (station house officer) for Scheduled Castes and 27 percent for OBCs has been done to instil confidence of the common man in police,” stated the advertisements.
She boasted about raising the daily wage of agricultural labour from Rs.58 to Rs.100 as well as increasing pension to aged persons, widows and disabled persons from Rs.150 to Rs.300.