12 Apr : Giving a clean chit to Mukhtar Ansari, Uttar Pradesh CM Mayawati described him as the messiah of the downtrodden, saying the BSP nominee from the seat has been falsely implicated in criminal cases by his political rivals.
Addressing an election rally at Varanasi on Sunday to drum up support for Ansari, the BSP supremo said as per reports received by her, he has done nothing wrong in his life and all the criminal cases against him are fake.
"Mukhtar has been implicated in the criminal cases by his political rivals and the rich people who did not want to see him serve the poor and the downtrodden," she said, adding that it was not proper to refer to him as a mafia don.
Mukhtar, who won the Mau assembly seat in UP in 2007 as an independent, has been in jail for the last over three years in connection with the BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai’s murder case.
Claiming to have established the rule of law in the state, Mayawati said she had been very tough with "goondas" and criminal elements no matter whether they were from the Gandhi family or a king’s cronie.
"No one would be allowed to break the law", she said and claimed that one MP and three MLAs had been arrested in Uttar Pradesh during her regime after their names figured in criminal cases.
If voted to power at the Centre, the BSP will root out terrorism and Mafiaism from the country, she said.Describing the Congress and BJP as ‘parties of capitalists’ the BSP supremo accused the UPA of not giving even a single penny for the development of Uttar Pradesh in the last two years.
It is due to this "apathetic" attitude of the Centre that the BSP withdrew support from the UPA, she said.
Targeting the Congress and BJP, she said these parties come to power with the support of capitalists and the rich and once in office they draft their policies with only them in mind.
Asserting that the BSP alone can help the poor, she said if voted to power her party will also give reservation to the poor among the forward castes.Mayawati said her government has written several times to the Centre on the issue of constitutional amendment to provide reservation to the poor among the upper castes but has received no response from it.
Charging successive Congress regimes at the Centre with ignoring the development of UP, she said this was the reason why the state had lagged behind others in terms of development even after 61 years of independence.
