By IANS
Lucknow : Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh Wednesday dared Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati to withdraw support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
Apparently peeved over Mayawati’s attack on Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, Singh said the Congress-led UPA was not going to succumb to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader’s arm-twisting tactics to extract huge funds from the central government.
“If Mayawati continues to extend support to the UPA government, it is fine; otherwise she is free to withdraw support,” he told a meeting of the state Congress here.
He, however, added: “We would pray to god to give her good sense.”
Rahul Gandhi, son of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, spent a night in a Dalit family’s home in Jhansi last week, but Mayawati had termed the gesture as drama.
Singh said: “What Rahul did came most naturally to him as he was only carrying forward the legacy of Congress legends like Mahatma Gandhi, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Sardar Patel and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.”
He further said: “If Mayawati has been accusing the central government of not conceding to her demand for a special economic package of Rs.80,000 crores (Rs.800 billion), let me tell you that the centre first wants to know what she has been doing with all the funds given to the state for various development schemes.
“We would also like to question her about all the wealth that she has acquired – after all she has to be answerable about the hundreds of crores she possesses.”
Referring to Mayawati’s oft repeated charge about the Congress wanting to get her eliminated, Singh pointed out: “Perhaps she has forgotten that it was because of the Congress that her life was saved on June 2, 1995, when she was attacked in the state guesthouse.”
He called upon party workers to prepare themselves for a mass movement before the Lok Sabha elections due next year.