Mayawati warns Dalit voters, says only she can defeat communal BJP
The BSP supremo was addressing party workers on the occasion of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar's 124th birth anniversary in Lucknow.
Anticipating that rival political parties would divide Dalit votes in the run-up to the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, BSP supremo Mayawati on Tuesday upped the ante against BJP, SP and Congress, accusing them of indulging in vote bank politics. The former UP chief minister told her supporters that BSP is the only party which can defeat the "communal BJP" in the state.
She was addressing BSP workers on the occasion of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar's 124th birth anniversary in Lucknow.
"I warn the Dalit voters that the Narendra Modi government at the Centre may confer Bharat Ratna on Kanshi Ram soon ahead of the Assembly elections to woo them. You shouldn't forget that it would only be the political trick of a party which showed a lack of respect for Ambedkar's followers. The Muslims also must not repeat the blunder of 2014. They should vote en bloc for the BSP, the only party which will stop the communal BJP in UP in 2017," the BSP president told a wellattended rally.
Sounding the poll bugle, Mayawati said, "The elections are not far away. You must keep in mind that only the BSP is honestly working for the Dalit community. This was the reason that I had constructed a large number of memorials and parks in the name of dalit leaders during my rule. Unfortunately, instead of using the money collected through tickets from these memorials and parks to maintain them, the Samajwadi Party government used it to construct buildings in Saifai, their party president Mulayam Singh Yadav's ancestral village."
Mayawati used her 90-minute speech to educate her supporters. Trying to infuse into their mind that the Congress, the BJP and the SP have always worked against Ambedkar and BSP founder Kanshi Ram, she repeated each sentence twice or thrice. Mayawati left no stone unturned to explain to her supporters why they should not vote for any other party.
"When the father of India's Constitution decided to contest the first parliamentary elections from the Mumbai seat, the Congress fielded a candidate against him and used money power and government machinery to defeat him.
The Congress should have allowed him to win unopposed, had it had really loved him. Now the Congress is organising functions in Ambedkar's memory. The BJP has also showed disregard for him and Kanshi Ram," she said. She alleged that the view of the Shiv Sena to snatch voting rights from the Muslims was actually an idea which was floated by the BJP.
"I dare Modi to remove the Shiva Sena from the BJP-led coalition government. I know it is not going to happen. Later on, they can also ask the government to withdraw voting rights from the dalits," she said.