By IANS,
Lucknow : While renewing her attack against the Congress-led central government as well as her bête noire Samajwadi Party, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minster Mayawati Friday blasted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for releasing a booklet containing 100 scams allegedly committed by her.
In her nearly two-hour-long speech at a function here to mark the completion of four years of her government, she also took on BJP president Nitin Gadkari for allegedly making derogatory references about her during a rally in Varanasi last month.
“I did not give it back to Gadkari in the language he had uttered against me because I believe in certain values that I have imbibed at home, of which perhaps Gadkari is completely devoid,” she said.
While alleging an “unholy nexus” between the three main opposition parties – BJP, Congress and Samajwadi Party – she said that “their common intent was to tarnish my image as well as that of my Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).”
“BJP displayed their habit of spreading canards by bringing out a book with so-called 100 scams purported to have been committed during my regime. Their partymen also went about circulating it among common people, yet they failed to impress anyone as their gameplan of using it as a tool for the next state assembly election stood widely exposed,” he said.
She dared the BJP to present any proof of her corruption.
Accusing Samajwadi Party and the Congress of “behaving like the BJP”, she wondered “how they had joined hands to term one party as corrupt.”
She warned: “I would like to make it loud and clear to them that if a probe were to be ordered in the working of different governments over the past, all their misdeeds and bunglings would get exposed. But I chose not to do so because that would have taken away 50 percent of our energies.”
While blaming the central government for “the financial crunch that the state always faced because of denial of its legitimate share”, the chief minister said it was the Congress which was involved in multi-billion rupees scams like the Commonwealth Games, 2G spectrum and Adarsh housing society.
Claiming that her government had taken unprecedented steps to check corruption and curb crime in the state, she said: “Corruption and crime have been the order of the day in Uttar Pradesh but no past government ever took the kind of measures as my government had done to stamp out both the menaces from the state.”
She called upon her partymen to go around the state to apprise the people about what her government had done to restore law and order and provide good governance.
“Time has come to give the entire opposition a befitting reply at the next state elections,” she declared.
More than 5,000 party leaders were invited to the big bash that was also attended by top bureaucrats of the state. The newly built swanky Ambedkar Auditorium was packed to its 2,600 capacity, while an equal number of BSP activists stood in the special enclosures put up in the compound outside.
The function concluded with an impressive cultural program, aimed not only at singing praises for Mayawati but also at highlighting the achievements and success stories of her four-year-old government.