By IANS
Lucknow : After three months of virtual silence, the opposition in Uttar Pradesh seems to have finally found its voice and has launched a noisy attack against the Mayawati government.
The main opposition Samajwadi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress have in a near simultaneous attack on the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government raised issues of the recent clashes in Agra and Allahabad, corruption in the government and law and order.
On Monday, Uttar Pradesh Congress vice president Satyadeo Tripathi said at a hurriedly convened press conference: “The recent violence in Agra and Allahabad were blatant examples of deteriorating law and order under the present regime.
“The Congress party refused to turn a blind eye to the poor law and order during the Mulayam regime and it will not keep quiet if the same conditions continue to prevail during the present government.”
On Sunday, Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh, rarely seen in public after his government was voted out of power, fired his first salvo against Mayawati.
Addressing workers at the Samajwadi Party state headquarters here, he flayed the chief minister for her “autocratic ways”.
Accusing Mayawati of “undoing certain decisions taken by the Mulayam regime”, he alleged: “Her actions have already exposed her hypocrisy about championing the cause of the poor and the downtrodden. Otherwise, she would not have done away with the unemployment dole introduced by the previous government as a serious social security measure.”
Referring to the chief minister acquiring government property and merging it with a bungalow that had earlier been allotted to her as ‘ex chief minister’, he charged Mayawati with house grabbing in Lucknow’s posh Mall Avenue.
“Very soon, Mall Avenue will have to be renamed Maya Avenue.”
And BJP leader Om Prakash Singh joined in when he said Mayawati was taking over bungalow after bungalow to form her own “private estate of a cluster of government bungalows”.