A marble statue of former CM and BSP supremo Mayawati in Gomti Nagar area here was vandalised on Thursday by unidentified ‘miscreants’ belonging to nondescript outfit Uttar Pradesh Navnirman Sena (UPNS), triggering tension in the city.
As soon as the news of damage to Mayawati’s statue spread, people thronged the site and most of the roads leading to Ambedkar Samajik Parivartan Sthal got jammed.
BSP leaders staged demonstrations to register their protest against the damage to the party chief’s statue. Leader of Opposition Swami Prasad Maurya rushed to the site and took out a cloth to cover the beheaded statue of Mayawati. Maurya described the incident ‘ghastly’.
Senior BSP leader, including party chief Ram Achal Rajbhar, blamed the Akhilesh Yadav Government for its involvement in the incident and warned of dire consequences if the damaged statue was not restored to its original form.
Condemning the incident, Akhilesh promised to get the damaged statue repaired, while party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav said strict action would be taken against the anti-social elements involved in the incident.
The pamphlets dropped by the UPNS at the site stated that they were anguished by the manner in which Mulayam had forgotten his promise of removing and bulldozing all the statues of the Dalit icons, if voted to on Thursspower. “It is same as the BJP had buried its promise of building a grand Ram Temple in Ayodhya, but had put its election plank on the backburner. So, we have broken the statue to mark our protest and to remind the SP of its promises to the people of the state,” stated the UPNS memorandum addressed to the CM. “By the time we reached the park, the miscreants had left the spot,” said a staff member of the Ambedkar Sthal Suraksha Vahini, a security organisation created under the BSP regime for protection of the parks and statues in Lucknow and outside.
Principal Secretary R M Srivastava and DGP Ambrish Chand Sharma inspected the site. Addressing a press conference in the evening, the two senior officers claimed that the miscreants involved in the incident would be arrested soon.