Using the Ambedkar Jayanti function as a platform to exhort party workers to grab power at the national level, Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati said if the Dalits wanted to get their rights they would have to get "the master key of political system in their hands"."The only mantra to get the power bestowed by the Indian Constitution on Dalits and sarva samaj is to grab the master key of political system.
If you have that key in your hand you won’t have to run helter-skelter for small things. Use your power to get the master key of the Central government," Mayawati said while addressing party workers who had assembled at Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar Samajik Parivartan Sthal here on Sunday to celebrate Dr Ambedkar's 122nd birth anniversary.
Mayawati used this occasion to show her strength as the Samajik Parivartan Sthal was chock-a-block with dancing and slogan shouting party workers. Despite no formal announcement of the rally, BSP workers came from across the state to attend the birth anniversary function.
The enthusiasm was so high that Mayawati had to ask the party workers to stop shouting slogan and beating of drums. In her almost 35-minute speech, Mayawati hit out Congress governments at Delhi and Rajsthan and the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh.
"Where is law and order in UP. During my tenure the goondas and mafia were put behind the bar but in this regime they are calling the shots," she said. "The situation in UP is so bad that over 100 communal flare-ups have been reported during the one-year rule of the Akhilesh Yadav government and in over three dozen cities the situation went out of hand forcing the administration to clamp curfew," she said.
"During our rule, the judgement on Ram Janmabhoomi case was delivered. When the whole country was trembling with fear we ensured peace despite the Centre's refusal to provide para-military forces to UP. We succeeded because we had the will to do well," the BSP supremo said. Hitting out at state government, Mayawati said the present political dispensation was anti-Dalit. She said the maintenance of Dalit monuments was poor; development in UP had come to a standstill and the number of criminal incidents had sky-rocketed.
The BSP supremo also spoke about the plight of the parents of kin of a girl who had gone to the police station to lodge complaint about rape of their 10-year-old daughter but were instead put behind the bar. "What is happening in UPIJ" she asked and hoped that the apex court would take suo motu cognisance of the Alwar rape case where a Dalit girl was raped by members of an upper caste.
Mayawati also announced that the BSP would contest the Handia bye-election despite knowing that the state government would misuse official machinery as it did in the Bhatpar Rani assembly bypoll.Mayawati later paid floral tributes at the statue of Dr Ambedkar at the Samajik Parivartan Sthal as Buddhist monks recited hymns.