By IANS,
Lucknow : Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati Sunday sought to convey to the Brahmin community that her party “alone was the well-wisher” of the community, whose support was largely responsible for propelling her to power over four years ago.
She was addressing a ‘Brahmin Samaj Bhaichara Sammelan’ organised here by her party in the hope of bringing her back to power in the 2012 assembly elections.
Apart from running down all her political rivals, she also sought to take advantage of the traditional social divide between the two dominant upper caste communities – Brahmins and Thakurs.
“Remember if you vote Congress to power, you will have Digvijay Singh sitting as chief minister, and in case you vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it would be Rajnath Singh occupying the coveted position,” she told a gathering.
Many vehicles – covered with BSP posters and bearing the party’s flag – were parked in the vicinity of the venue.
Mayawati’s bid to woo the community focused on the largesse she doled out to her party’s Brahmin mascot and general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra and his family members.
Starting with Mishra, she gave out the list of his family members and relatives who had been given important assignments equivalent to the rank of cabinet minister.
“You all know Satish Chandra Mishra was advocate general in my government, and he successfully contested many cases for me. I, therefore, made him the national general secretary of the party,” she said.
“You will probably want to know why I handpicked Mishra’s other family members for some of the key positions. Well, his two sisters went to the extent of telling him that he should work for the BSP even at the cost of abandoning his legal profession,” she said.
“I, therefore, decided to appoint his sister Abha Agnihotri as the chairperson of the state women’s commission. His brother Vinod Chand Mishra, who was a judge in the Allahabad High Court, also dedicated himself to the service of our party after his retirement. So, I made him chairman of the state law commission,” said Mayawati.