By IANS,
Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati Friday accused the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other political parties of conspiring to prevent her from becoming the prime minister.
“It was amply evident that the Congress, BJP and SP (Samajwadi Party) ganged up to prevent my rise to the prime minister’s chair, simply because they could not digest the idea of a Dalit occupying the highest office,” Mayawati, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo, told a public rally here.
She said this “anti-Dalit” approach of these parties was a glaring example of “rabid caste politics”.
Threatened by the revival of the Congress party in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati also reiterated her commitment to ‘social engineering’ and accused the opposition of conspiring to break this campaign.
She said she was not prepared to give up her campaign after her party’s poor performance in the April-May Lok Sabha elections.
“I am aware that the opposition parties have been conspiring to break the social engineering campaign undertaken by us. But let me tell you that no matter what they do, they would not be able to deter me from pursuing my ultimate mission,” Mayawati told the gathering.
A large part of her hour-long address was aimed at accusing the opposition in general, and the Congress in particular, of attempting to break the “bhaichara” (social harmony) that the BSP has been trying to promote as part of its effort to break caste barriers and bring upper caste Hindus and Muslims together with Dalits on the party platform.
Before the Lok Sabha polls, Mayawati projected herself as the prime ministerial candidate of the Third Front but now she admitted that would take time. She said: “It does not matter to me how many more years it will take to achieve my ultimate goal.”
Mayawati argued that the BSP’s vote share in the state “was still way ahead of all other political rivals.”
She was scheduled to address such rallies in three cities – Lucknow, Ghaziabad in western Uttar Pradesh, and Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh, but she chose to cancel her trip to Azamgarh.
Mayawati declared Friday’s rallies as the beginning of a nationwide campaign to condemn the “casteist” approach of all other parties.