Mayawati pledges support to GST but attacks government on 'intolerance'

NEW DELHI: Mayawati extended her Bahujan Samaj Party’s support to the GST bill in Rajya Sabha on Monday, even as she charged the BJP with paying lip service to BR Ambedkar’s principles of affirmative action and demanded dismissal of Union minister VK Singh and Assam governor PB Acharya for their allegedly intemperate remarks about Dalits and Muslims, respectively.

“If you (government) are completely sure that passage of GST bill will improve economy, our party will support this Bill,” Mayawati said, while participating in the debate on ‘Commitment to the Constitution’. The BSP chief, however, came down heavily against VK Singh’s remarks made after the killing of two Dalit children in BJP-ruled Haryana recently and demanded that the minister be “dismissed” from the council of ministers and “sent to jail as such people deserve to be in jail and not in Parliament”.

She also demanded the removal of Assam governor for his remarks about Muslims recently. Significantly, Mayawati, whose party faces an electoral battle in its home state UP in 2017, spared the SP government in the state and instead trained her guns on the BJP over alleged lack of seriousness about concerns of Dalits and rising intolerance, while berating Congress for trying to claim Ambedkar’s legacy.

So much so that she mentioned the killing of a Muslim man in UP’ Dadri but only to attack BJP without even bothering to mention the state government.