Chief Minister Mayawati sacks two more tainted ministers

LUCKNOW: Embarrassed by the by the state Lokayukta report indicting two ministers for corruption, Chief Minister Mayawati tried to contain the damage in the poll bound state by sacking them from the cabinet. The minister for Secondary Education Rangnath Mishra and Labour minister Badshah Singh were removed from the ministry on Wednesday and a vigilance probe has been ordered against them by Mayawati.

The Lokayukta NK Mehrotra in his report sent to the Chief Minister on Tuesday had found secondary education minister Rangnath Mishra guilty of buying huge tracts of land in UP, Uttarakhand and Mumbai from unaccounted wealth and recommended his removal. The Lokayukta is still probing the charges against Badshah Singh of grabbing village panchayat land for building his college in Mahoba district.

Earlier, two more ministers Rajesh Tripathi and Awadhpal Singh Yadav were removed from the government after the Lokayukta gave adverse reports against them.

The latest to be dropped, Badshah Singh has not been pulling along well with the BSP leadership for sometime after reports of his being denied a ticket to contest the forthcoming assembly elections surfaced.

On the other hand Rangnath Mishra who had defected from the BJP to the BSP is said to have serious differences with other BSP leaders in his home district.

Two more ministers, Mayawati's trusted aide Babu Singh Kushwaha and Anant Kumar Mishra had resigned from the government in April after a huge public outcry over the killing of a series of doctors over massive loot of public funds.

In what could spell further trouble for the government, the Lokayukta is also looking into corruption charges against three more ministers- the higher education minister Rakesh Dhar Tripathi, culture minister Subhash Pandey and horticulture minister Narain Singh.

The Bahujan Samaj Party state president Swami Prasad Maurya said that chief minister Mayawati has sacked the two ministers so that the probe against them is not influenced and opposition parties are not able to rake up the issue to discredit the government.

He said that the ruling BSP is the only party in the country which has taken prompt action against its ministers and leaders found guilty of corruption and breaking the law. Maurya said that the BJP ruled states of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Chattisgarh have not taken action against their Lokayukta reports in some serious cases. In BJP ruled Gujarat the state government did not fill the post for the Lokayukta for several years and has now legally challenging the latest appointment.

Similarly in the Congress governed state of Delhi has not taken any action on the Lokayukta report against its two ministers.