Scared Congress may make Meira or Shinde PM: Mayawati

By IANS,

Noida : The Congress was so scared of her power that they could make Speaker Meira Kumar or union minister Sushil Kumar Shinde the prime minister, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati said here Friday while inaugurating a Rs.684 crore park dedicated to the Dalit cause.


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Virtually turning her speech into a frontal attack on the Congress, she said: “Congress is so scared of me that it may make Meira Kumar or Sushil Sinde the prime minister.”

Hitting out at the Congress, she said it had no place for Dalit icons and had ignored them through its decades in power. “I have made the park because the Congress has ignored Dalit icons.”

Referring to the various memorials dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, she said the party had given lots of space to its heroes on the west bank of the Yamuna. That’s why, she said, she had taken over the east bank of the river.

The message was clear — the west bank is the Congress’s, the east bank is the Bahujan Samaj Party’s.

The sprawling 82-acre Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal and Green Garden has statues of 24 elephants, the symbol of her Bahujan Samaj Party, of Dalit icon B.R. Ambedkar, her mentor Kanshi Ram and of herself. Besides, it has massive friezes from their lives. One panel even includes her parents.

She lashed out at the central government and other political parties that they had never bothered to give the due share to Dalits, backward classes and other weaker sections.

Mayawati recalled that on Oct 8, 2003, when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) conducted raids on her properties during the National Democratic Alliance rule, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi phoned her. Gandhi, Mayawati said, told her that this was a campaign to malign her.

“But she has forgotten over the eight years.”

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