By IANS
Lucknow : All roads seemed to lead to the sprawling new Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) headquarters Saturday as the city turned a BSP blue to mark the 74th birth anniversary Saturday of party founder and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s political mentor Kanshi Ram.
There were hundreds of blue billboards, welcome gates and arches, posters and cardboard cut-outs of the two leaders together with those of BSP’s widely known icons visible all across this capital of India’s most populous state, making it a day to remember for all and sundry.
Thousands of BSP partymen, who arrived in the city from across the state, have taken a pledge to “see Behen-ji (as Mayawati is known) as the next prime minister”. In fact, this was writ large at the very threshold of the new party office on Mall Avenue, where a model of the national parliament was emblazoned with a slogan – “UP to hamari hai – ab Dilli ki baari hai” (Uttar Pradesh is ours and now it is our turn to grab Delhi).
“Since it was Kanshi Ram who built the party from scratch and was responsible for taking the party to power for the first time in UP, we would like to take this pledge on his 74th birth anniversary – observed as Inspiration Day – to make Delhi our next mission,” cried an excited party worker from Ambedkar Nagar, Mayawati’s political turf.
Earlier, the BSP activists participated in a mini marathon, which was followed by the inauguration of the new state headquarter erected on a sprawling two-acre plot created after razing two ministerial bungalows in Mall Avenue, the state capital’s most prime area.
Apart from its grandeur, that is typical of all Mayawati initiated buildings, the party office can accommodate 10,000 people – the approximate number who converged there for the closed-door meeting Saturday noon.
Addressing a meeting of party delegates from each of the 403 state assembly constituencies, Mayawati sought to exhort the party rank and file to get into the election mode.
The short distance of 500 metres from the chief minister’s residence to the party office was interspersed with giant welcome arches, large cut-outs, posters and hoardings of not just Kanshi Ram and Mayawati, but also BSP icons – Babasaheb Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Chattraparti Shahuji Maharaj, Narayan Guru and Ramaswamy Periyar.