By IANS,
Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati may have made two key ministers quit over the murder of Lucknow’s chief medical officer B.P. Singh but the opposition is far from impressed.
Family Welfare Minister Babu Singh Kushwaha and Health Minister Anant Kumar Misra have resigned, owning responsibility for the multi-crore scams unearthed in their respective departments during the course of investigations into the April 2 murder of the chief medical officer, state Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh announced Thursday.
But the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party saw in it Mayawati’s ploy and asked for her resignation.
“It was only with a view to avoiding a CBI inquiry that Mayawati made Anant Kumar Misra and Babu Singh Kushwaha resign,” said Congress president Rita Bahuguna-Joshi.
“The chief minister knows how an independent probe would expose the rampant large-scale bungling of government funds in Uttar Pradesh. The best way to avoid that was to put up a facade of action against her favourite ministers who had so far been given a free hand to plunder,” she pointed out.
“If it is to be believed the ministers had resigned on high moral ground, then the chief minister too should be taking the moral responsibility for irregularities that led to the CMO’s murder; therefore she ought to step down,” Bahuguna-Joshi said.
State Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Surya Pratap Shahi was equally scathing in his criticism of Mayawati.
He termed Mayawati’s action as a “cover up” after his party released a 140-page book listing 100 scams of the Mayawati regime.
“The action against the two ministers was a reaction to the publication of Mayawati’s 100 scams, copies of which were released by our national secretary Kirit Somaiya at a press conference here earlier in the morning yesterday,” Shahi said.
“The documentary evidence attached with our booklet was sufficient to nail the chief minister, who had minted thousands of crores. Surely, the resignation of ministers was intended to divert the attention from the real scamster.”
Senior Samajwadi Party leader Shiv Pal Yadav was of the view that an independent probe was important.
“Since the state cabinet secretary himself admitted at a press conference last evening that corruption was rampant in ministries held by Misra and Kushwaha, an independent probe is extremely important,” Yadav said.
He alleged that “bigger financial irregularities” were taking place in other ministries and demanded Mawayati’s resignation.
B.P. Singh was gunned down on April 2 soon after he stepped out of his house for his routine morning walk in Lucknow’s posh Gomati Nagar locality.