Amit Shah's 'childish' remarks betray his nervousness ahead of UP polls, says Mayawati

Lucknow: Hitting back at BJP Chief Amit Shah after he needled her on desertions in BSP, former chief minister Mayawati on Sunday said his “childish” remarks betrayed BJP’s nervousness ahead of Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh. The BSP supremo lashed out at Shah, saying the BJP-led government at the Centre should have imposed President’s rule in Uttar Pradesh to fullfil its promise to improve law and order situation in the state but it “failed” to fulfil its “constitution obligation”. [caption id=“attachment_2870654” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Mayawati. PTI[/caption] “Our growing base has made BJP so nervous that its president Amit Shah is making childish remarks on Uttar Pradesh’s law and order situation and not taking any action,” Mayawati said at a press conference. Shah had said the manner in which leaders were exiting BSP, by the time elections come Mayawati will be the lone person left in the party. This was Mayawati’s fourth impromptu press conference in a span of less than a fortnight which has led her political opponents to claim that the desertions from BSP have left her jittery. Mayawati said while Akhilesh Yadav government has failed to control crime, Shah has been saying that law and order is a state subject and it was not for US President Barack Obama to set things right. “I want to say that the NDA government at the Centre has failed to carry out its constitutional obligations,” she said, adding that imposition of President’s rule in the state was the only answer. “Shah’s remarks are not only childish, they are irresponsible,” she said, targeting the BJP chief who is going hammer and tongs at both ruling Samajwadi Party and main opposition BSP in the state in the build to the Assembly polls due next year. During a series of recent meetings in UP in the run up to the Assembly elections in early 2017, the BJP chief accused SP and BSP of giving a prop to then UPA government at the Centre for 10 years. Mayawati charged the BJP with dabbling in all sort of “dirty designs” and playing politics in the name of Ram Mandir to return to power in the state. She said the SP government has failed to control crime in Uttar Pradesh where, she pointed, even policemen were paying with blood. The BSP supremo said that before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, BJP had promised to ensure better law and order in UP the moment it came to power at the Centre. “But what happened? It has failed to carry out its constitutional duties,” she rued, and mocked at Shah for punctuating his speech with expressions like “jungle raj” and “goonda raj” in UP and “just doing nothing”. In back-to-back setbacks to BSP in last fortnight, two senior leaders and once close confidants of Mayawati – Swami Prasad Maurya and RK Chaudhary – quit the party accusing her of auctioning tickets for the upcoming Assembly polls, ignoring Kanshi Ram’s ideology and running the organisation like her “private real estate company”. Maurya belongs to other backward caste while Chaudhary is a Dalit, the two important votebanks of BSP.