Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Tuesday hit out at the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government accusing them of according “step-motherly treatment” to Kerala. The party also urged the Centre to declare floods in the southern state as a national calamity and demanded that all-out help be provided to the flood-hit state.
“Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) condemns the step-motherly treatment shown by the Centre towards non-BJP ruled states, including Kerala, which has been badly affected by floods. We demand that it be immediately declared a national calamity,” Mayawati said in a press release issued on Tuesday morning. “The entire Kerala and part of Karnataka have been hit by floods and different organisations and individuals are doing the needful at their level, but the Central government has not shown the required seriousness and sensitivity towards it,” she said. “either the Centre has declared it a national calamity nor shown any seriousness in giving permission to Kerala to impose cess on state Goods and Services Tax (GST) to generate resources on its own,” the BSP president said, asking whether that was not an example of the BJP “narrow politics”.
Mayawati also asked her partymen in various states under the south zone to provide all possible help to the needy, adding that all state governments, shunning their political affiliations, should lend support. She said some areas in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand had also been hit by floods. Over 300 people have died and several lakh displaced in floods and landslides caused by monsoon rains since August 8 across Kerala.