By IANS
Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati completed 100 days in office Wednesday with a massive publicity blitz – trumpeting her government’s achievements – that dominated not just the newspapers but seemingly the skyline with larger-than-life hoardings.
Many national dailies – some with a distinctly different Mayawati clad in a silk sari, bejewelled and carefully coiffeured – and virtually all state newspapers carried huge advertisements listing the government’s “unparalleled achievements”.
Besides, for added visual impact were tens of thousands of hoardings put up across this sprawling state to impress.
The motto was “Sarvajan Hitaya, Sarvajan Sukhaya” (For benefit of all, For happiness of all), and the message covered everything from agriculture policy to roads but focussed on the improvement in law and order.
At a special function in the state capital, Mayawati rolled out the numbers — 74 percent decline in kidnapping, 46 percent in robbery, 36 percent in dacoity, 28 percent in rioting, 24 percent in rape, 20 percent in murder and 20 percent in vehicle theft over the corresponding period last year.
The gunning down of bandit Shiv Kumar Patel, better known as Dadua, by the Special task Force (STF), was shown as another feather in her cap. The bandit was synonymous with terror in vast areas along the Uttar Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh border for three decades and was rated as the second biggest catch in the country after south India’s Veerappan.
According to the chief minister: “Effective action has been taken against 948 of the listed 1,452 mafia gangs while possession was restored to 49,000 of the 69,000 deprived allottees of government land in villages.”
Reservation in allocation of key police appointments and filling the backlog of 16,637 vacancies against reserved posts in other departments were listed too.
“Reservation of 23 percent posts of SHOs (station house officer) for Scheduled Castes and 27 percent for OBCs has been done to instil confidence of the common man in police,” stated the advertisements.
She boasted about raising the daily wage of agricultural labour from Rs.58 to Rs.100 as well as increasing pension to aged persons, widows and disabled persons from Rs.150 to Rs.300.
Strangely, the government has also listed its demand of Rs.800 billion to the prime minister for a special development package for Bundelkhand and Purvanchal regions as an achievement.
Similarly, another demand for Rs.22 billion for flood relief finds place in the achievements too.