Forget doom-sayers, in UP Maya holds the aces

What is your take on the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which sacked 21 ministers and MLAs just months before the Assembly elections in UP? It did not field nearly half of its sitting MLAs. Its supreme leader Mayawati is facing cases of disproportionate income. An outsider may say that BSP is chaotic and doomed. But for Mayawati, the doom-sayers mean little. On her 56th birthday today, the UP chief minister made her first public appearance through a press conference after the assembly elections were announced. She announced a list of 403 candidates and declared that her party (BSP) was a movement and it had no alternative in the state. Mayawati is convinced that the TINA (there is no alternative) factor will work for her. [caption id=“attachment_182768” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“On her 56th birthday, Mayawati still knows her state better than anyone. Reuters”]  [/caption] “I am sure that my people will gift me a victory in the coming assembly elections,’’ Mayawati said, echoing her words written in her official profile on the UP government website:  “I like the competition and I like to win.’’ She also released her official autobiography on the occasion. Psephologists and analysts may argue that the Congress will improve its tally and may get the power brokering role in UP, but they have still not taken into account the TINA factor. They have already announced that Mayawati’s BSP may not get full majority, but it will remain the largest party in the coming assembly elections. Tipped as the world’s top eight women by international magazine Newsweek, Mayawati knows only MITA (Mayawati is the only answer). Election pundits can go on with their assessment running her prospects down in news rooms and TV studios. In the field, however, MITA is what matters. Born to a poor dalit family – her father was a clerk in a postal department – in a nondescript Delhi hospital, Mayawati thrives on the past. Dalits were exploited for thousands of years in India and she feels BSP is their rallying point, their only saviour. Television grabs of her PSO wiping muck on her shoes in public do not perturb her. This is symbolic. This is rather her revenge on high caste people, who exploited dalits for years. By throwing out 21 ministers and MLAs from her party and denying election ticket to nearly half of her sitting MLAs, Mayawati says she is doing a ‘course correction.’ In reality, she denied ticket to every MLA who had won election by a few hundred votes in the 2007 Assembly elections. This is her way to tackle anti-incumbency. If this is electoral engineering, she has social engineering up her sleeve too. Mayawati has fielded maximum candidates from other backward castes (OBCs) (113), followed by Scheduled Castes (88), Muslims (85), Brahmins (74), Kshatriya (33) and others (10). Since 2007, when Mayawati took over as the CM, nothing seems to have changed in UP. If UP were a country, it would be the world’s sixth largest country. Yet it accounts for a mere 0.06 per cent of the country’s total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). With 20 per cent of India’s population, it lags behind even Uttarakhand, a decade-old state carved out of UP, in industrial growth rate. UP recorded maximum crimes against Scheduled Castes in 2009 and 2010. The state has earned notoriety for being number one in the country in kidnapping of women and violent crimes, including murder, kidnapping and abduction and dacoity, during 2010. It stands only second – first being Madhya Pradesh – in women being raped. Three MLAs of her own party are facing charges of rape. And four BSP MLAs are in the jail facing murder, rape and kidnapping charges. Mayawati, however, is unperturbed. Her last public appearance was on 14 November 2010 in Lucknow and today she held a press conference. Rahul Gandhi’s uncountable padyatras and public rallies and even his stay at dalits’ houses in UP do not cause anxiety to Mayawati. The MITA factor is too overwhelming and she takes the dalits as her constituency for granted. Mayawati’s confidence comes out of her contact with her district level party officials, whom she meets once in four months at her Lucknow residence. In a year, she holds only two public rallies. During her summer rally, she does not miss a chance to flaunt her arrogance by positioning air-conditioners blowing cool air over her, while the crowd sits in the heat. She holds no public darbar. But she keeps track of the pulse of her people. She makes surprise visits – or as people call `impact’ visits, but still no one-to-one public contact – to DM offices, hospitals and administrative offices and suspends and transfers scores of police officers and senior bureaucrats at one stroke. There is no official data on number of suspensions and transfers, but the bureaucrat associations put the rough estimate at 300 suspensions and 800 transfers at senior official levels in the past four years. On the personal front, Mayawati faces charges of disproportionate assets in the Supreme Court. After taking over as chief minister for the fourth time in May 2007, her personal income grew from Rs 52 crore to Rs 88 crore, an increase of Rs 35 crore. She has over Rs 12 crore in bank deposits and she owns five sprawling commercial properties and bungalows at prime locations in New Delhi – two in Connaught Place –, Okhla and Lucknow. Her party has shown a collection of Rs 202 crore during 2007-2009. In Income Tax returns, the BSP declared that it did not receive a single voluntary contribution in excess of Rs 20,000 rupees. This means over one lakh people made voluntary contributions of Rs 20,000 each to BSP. Despite all this, Mayawati is set to spring a surprise in the elections once again. She proved all the poll predictions wrong in 2007 when she secured absolute majority by winning 227 out of 403 seats of the UP Assembly. Once again, her lawyer and political advisor Satish Chandra Mishra has brought in several Brahmins, Muslims and upper caste people to contest Assembly elections on BSP tickets. Continues on the next page In 2007, BSP as usual got the dalit votes. But its candidates of higher castes polled votes from other castes and religion too. The idea clicked and Mayawati overnight changed her slogan from ‘Bahu’ Jan to ‘Sarva’ Jan. She even removed idol of Erode Venkatanaicker Ramasamy `Periyar’, a champion icon figure for dalits in the South, from the list of people whom the BSP worships. Mayawati doesn’t trust many people. Of six brothers and a sister, she reposes her trust only in one brother, Anand. Known as Anand Bhaiya among bureaucrats, politicians and contractors, he is `eyes and ears’ of Mayawati for everything that happens in Noida and Ghaziabad. In old times, Anand has served as Class IV employee at Noida office. Today, he apparently decides transfers, tenders and appointment. Land being the most expensive commodity in these two NCR cities, Anand bhaiya virtually has a pie in every land deal. Mayawati’s confidence level also reflects in the fact that she kept 32 ministries, almost half of the total number of ministries available, with herself. These portfolios include Home, Intelligence, Civil Aviation, State Wealth, Electronics and Information, Industry, Public Gardens and Administrative Reforms. The rest of the key ministries she gave to her another trusted lieutenant Naseemuddin Siddiqui, who holds Excise, Public Works, Irrigation, Housing & Urban Planning, Sugarcane Development, Sugar Industry and Agriculture. Her `inner’ circle includes Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh and Principal Secretary to CM Navneet Sehgal and Swami Prasad Maurya. She recently threw out Babu Singh Kushwaha from her inner circle and even the BSP. Her reason for her rare public appearances, especially after the 1995 guest house attack in Lucknow, is quite apparent. She has security paranoia and because of that she hardly steps out of her house. ``She had once gone to Madhya Pradesh for some work. On her arrival at Bhopal, she was gheraoed by some protesters. She was so terrified that she had summoned the then UP DGP Vikram Singh to Bhopal. Vikram Singh had to sit on the front seat along with the driver throughout her trip to Madhya Pradesh for her security,’’ a senior police officer says. She also turned the CM house in Lucknow into a virtual fortress, apprehending security concerns from the neighbourhood. She either bought or forced people to vacate houses in the CM house neighbourhood. She even sent notices to two private citizens – Khalid Abdullah and Sunil Singh - owning houses in that vicinity on completion of 99 years of lease. She asked them to leave the house. These two individuals went to the court and got a stay on the Mayawati government’s orders. The security scene at the CM house in Lucknow is replica of top level security as exhibited at the PM residence at 7 Race Course. “I have never seen such overwhelming security concerns during my career for any chief minister,” says former State DGP I C Dwivedi. Her security paranoia, however, does not cut her links with people. She always remains in news by putting statues and grandiose parks in Lucknow, Noida and elsewhere. She is perhaps the only living politician, who has her statue placed in Lucknow beside her mentor Kanshi Ram. Today, she claimed in the press conference that it was her mentor Kanshi Ram’s will to have her statue beside him. “I am registering and writing the history of BSP movement and its rule by building statues and elephants, what’s wrong in that? These parks are inspirational for my people,” Mayawati said, while questioning Central Election Commission’s decision to cover all the elephants erected with the public money in UP. Mayawati’s interest in statues is tremendous. Her personal sculptor Shravan Prajapati apparently charged Rs 65 lakh for each statue. She reportedly even instructs her sculptor that she should look slim and tall in her statue. Her neck should look long. She should not have double chin and her chest should not look too pronounced. There was a sense of protest against spending public money on such grandiose parks, but she finds it inspirational for her people. She even constituted a statutory force, known as State Special Zone Security, to guard the memorials in the state at the cost of Rs 200 crore per annum. The Force has 1000 personnel guarding the Ambedkar Memorials at Lucknow and Noida, Kanshiram Smarak, Eco Park, Kanshiram Green Eco Garden, Budhha Vihar Shanti Upvan, Rama Bai Ambedkar Maidan and Kanshiram Sanskriti Sthal. On her last birthday, Mayawati had announced a pension of Rs 400 per month to all poor people, old people, physically handicapped and widows. When several states are still experimenting with cash transfers to those who live below poverty lines, Mayawati has already been giving cash to the poor. It is said that nearly 31 lakh people get Rs 400 every month in the state. Mayawati thinks this along with her ‘social engineering’ card will drive her home safe despite all odds.