By IANS
Lucknow/New Delhi : As Lucknow turned a BSP blue, Uttar Pradesh ministers and top bureaucrats gathered at Mayawati’s pink festooned home Tuesday to sing “Happy Birthday!” and watch the chief minister, glittering in solitaires and a brocade salwar kurta, cut her cake – and eat it too.
Attired in an elaborate outfit in a light shade of her favourite pink and wearing a dazzling double string of solitaire diamonds, Mayawati was all smiles as the TV camera lights shone on her at her 52nd birthday celebrations in her official residence.
Well-known for celebrating her birthday in style, Mayawati was flanked by close aide Satish Chandra Misra, who is the party’s Brahmin face, and Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh. They were amongst the first to offer her the cake.
The Taj chef had created the huge white chocolate cake, with the long message ‘Behenji ke 52ven janmdivas par hardik badhaiyan’ (Best wishes to Behenji on her 52nd birthday) inscribed on it.
The cake weighed exactly 52 kg, in keeping with the significance of the day.Mayawati announced later that Mishra had sponsored the cake.
Contrary to her earlier announcement that her 52nd birthday celebrations would be low-key, the whole exercise was as high-profile as it gets.
The Dalit icon, who rode to power last year in India’s most populous state with her social engineering formula, began her birthday celebrations in Lucknow and later flew to the national capital, where she again cut the cake.
The chief minister’s expensive clothes and jewellery were as talked about as the several schemes she announced.
The highlight of her announcements Tuesday was the launch of the Ganga Expressway, the 1,040 km-long road that will connect Noida in the western edge of the state to Ballia in the east.
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh greeted Mayawati.
“Sonia Gandhi wished me ‘happy birthday’ at 9 a.m. while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called up all the way from China to greet me,” she said with a big smile at the plush conference hall of her residence.
The Lucknow skyline was plastered with hundreds of hoardings showering greetings on the chief minister.
Taking a dig at the opposition parties and the media about the expenditure incurred on the celebrations, the chief minister declared: “The hoardings and decorated gateways have been paid for from the hard-earned money of the party workers. Each penny spent has come from the party members.”
Around 1 p.m., Mayawati and her entourage flew to New Delhi to continue the celebrations. Her father, Prabhudas and brother Anand and his family joined her at a five star hotel. “Her mother is not well so she could not come,” Mishra told reporters. Mishra’s family was also present on the occasion.
A happy Mayawati went through the ritual of cutting the birthday cake again and her family members offered her the cake.
She followed this up with the release of the third volume of “Mere Sangharshmai Jeevan Evam BSP Movement ka Safarnama”.
Then she read out the same speech that she had rendered in Lucknow.
National dailies carried full-page advertisements listing Mayawati’s many plans for the day. Besides the expressway, she launched a programme for the rehabilitation and resettlement of those displaced by the highway project, a new health insurance scheme promising free treatment to below-poverty-line families and a Rs.16 billion action plan for nine drought-hit districts.
Mayawati also announced schemes for the Bundelkhand region of her state including a 4,000 MW thermal power project.