After congratulating Charanjit Singh Channi for becoming the first Dalit chief minister of Punjab, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati slammed the Congress, saying that the move was an “election gimmick” and aimed at wooing the grand old party’s slipping support base of Dalit community.
"It is purely an election gimmick of the Congress of appointing Charanjit Singh Channi as chief minister for a few months just to get the votes of Dalits. I congratulate and give Channi good wishes but it would have been better if the Congress had earlier made him the chief minister to serve for five years. But now making him the CM just before the assembly election, shows that it is just their hollow election stunt. The truth is that the Congress does not have faith in Dalits. They remember Dalits only at the time of elections," Mayawati said while cautioning the people of Punjab to beware of the Congress conspiracy.
Alleging that Congress was troubled with the alliance between the BSP and Akali Dal in Punjab, Mayawati said that back in the days, the Congress had accepted Dr Ambedkar only because it could not find anyone better to script the Constitution of India.
“When the talks started about the formation of the Indian Constitution, if Jawaharlal Nehru and company had a more capable person than Ambedkar, they would have never involved him in the formation of the Constitution,” she alleged.
Later, training her guns at the Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati alleged that a similar love for Other Backward Classes had emerged in the ruling party too.
"If the BJP wants to do something for the OBCs then why not get caste based census done? Besides, why have Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes candidates not been appointed on vacant government jobs so far?” she questioned.
The BSP president added that she was confident that Dalits and Backwards, be it in Punjab or Uttar Pradesh, would not fall for the enticement by parties like the Congress and the BJP.