Will break back of Samajwadi Party goons: Mayawati

LUCKNOW: In what must come as a relief to the UPA supported by two restive allies who are foes at the state level, BSP chief trained her guns on rival SP without once mentioning the possibility of early polls.

In her big speech on BR Ambedkar’s birth anniversary on Sunday, Mayawati warned SP workers against grabbing land allotted to Dalits. She promised to break the back of those terrorising the Dalits once BSP came back to power.

On April 7, Mayawati had said in Chandigarh that though she could not predict when Lok Sabha polls would be held, the present conditions suggested that polls could be pre-poned. In the same speech she had reiterated her support to UPA. But on Sunday she did not speak about early polls.

Mayawati charged SP with forcibly removing posters of Dr Ambedkar and those of the party on the eve of the birth anniversary. She claimed BSP had received permission to put up the banners and posters, but the administration had victimised her party at the instigation of the SP government.

She said SP had failed on the law and order front and more than three-dozen riots had taken place in the last one-year of its rule. In her regime, she said goons were thrown behind bars and despite the sensitivity of the high court’s judgement on the Ayodhya dispute, her government was able to prevent any outbreak of communal tension. She claimed Dalits were being victimised in all states ruled by Congress and BJP, but the condition was worse in Uttar Pradesh.