In marathon RS speech, Mayawati supports GST, mocks Modi's tea diplomacy, pushes for quotas

BSP chief Mayawati came out in support of the GST bill and took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his all out effort to push the ambitious indirect tax reform through the winter session of Parliament. Mayawati spoke for over an hour in the Rajya Sabha on Monday and took her time - while PM Modi is away for a climate huddle in Paris - to slam the ruling party for “rising intolerance” in the country and questioned Modi’s silence on the issue. [caption id=“attachment_2333056” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  BSP chief Mayawati/ AFP[/caption] Mayawati took a dig at Modi’s meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former PM Manmohan Singh over tea to resolve the political deadlock over the GST bill. “You will not need to offer even a cup of tea or a glass of water (to me) for this,” she said. “If your government is fully confident that bringing the GST bill is in the interest of the nation, it will bring a change in the economy and give a boost to it, the BSP will definitely back it. Our party supports the bill in Parliament,” she said on the GST bill that is stuck in the Parliament’s upper house for BJPs want of numbers to push it through. She took on RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat too on his plans to “review the reservation policy.” “I am warning, if there is any such attempt from the government, I will take to the streets and hold a massive agitation. I will not allow any such attempt to succeed.” She claimed that when she headed a BSP-BJP coalition government in Uttar Pradesh over a decade ago, the BJP put pressure on her to pursue the “Hindutva agenda”. She also said the CBI was being “misused” to “harass” her in the Taj Corridor case. Mayawati came with a long laundry list of talking points starting from well before the Bihar elections. She rubbished MoS Gen (retd) V K Singh’s remarks after the death of two Dalit children in a terrible fire in Haryana. V K Singh had drawn a parallel between the family in question and stray dogs. “Such a minister should be dropped from the Council of Ministers and sent to jail as such people deserve to be in jail and not in Parliament,” she said. Referring to the Dadri lynching, she questioned the NDA government’s commitment to the Constitution and drew attention to Modi’s “silence.” “People from the BJP and affiliated Hindu organisations keep on making controversial, undignified remarks. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi…keeps silent,” she told a packed Rajya Sabha. Without naming actor Aamir Khan, Mayawati batted for the actor saying he is not responsible for the furore after he spoke on “feeling unsafe” in India. She also pushed for reservation for Dalits and tribals in promotions in the government and private sector, and favoured quota for economically-backward sections. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi said a lot in his concluding remarks during the debate on Constitution (in Lok Sabha) on Friday. It would have been better if he had announced some decision to amend the Constitution for reservation to weaker sections of society in private sector and reservation for ST/SCs in promotion…(and) separate quota to the poor among the upper castes on the basis on their economic condition by amending the Constitution. But no such announcement was made,” she said.