LUCKNOW: Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Saturday formally sounded the poll bugle at a mammoth rally here. She indicated that if voted to power, her governance would not be vindictive in approach.
The BSP supremo said that if she was back in the saddle in Lucknow after the 2022 assembly election, her government would not stop any of the ongoing development projects.
“All the projects taken up by the BJP in Ayodhya, Varanasi, Mathura, and other religious sites are still under construction and I promise that they won't be stopped if we come to power. All good schemes of Centre and state won't be stopped. Unlike BJP and SP, I will not change the names of places unnecessarily. All existing schemes will be reviewed and the good ones will be extended,” she said.
She focused more on the issues of unemployment and the migration of talent to other states. Mayawati announced that her party would contest the upcoming assembly elections on the issues of jobs to youth to stop their migration to other states.
The BSP chief, who paid her tributes to her party’s founder-president Kanshi Ram on his 15th death anniversary on Saturday, demanded Bharat Ratna for the “icon of the deprived and downtrodden.”
“All the welfare schemes started during BSP rule, will be restarted. A commission to consider all demands being put up by employees of various departments would be set up. Acceptable demands will be fulfilled. Extremely backward areas will be developed on priority and Dr Ambedkar Gram Vikas Yojana and Manyawar Shri Kanshi Ramji Shahari Samagra Vikas Yojana will be restarted to develop villages and cities,” she said, adding that no new hospitals, medical colleges, schools, roads and bridges would be built till the existing ones were not repaired.
Mayawati also opposed the airing of opinion polls ahead of UP elections due early next year. Citing the example of West Bengal where she claimed that the actual result were contrary to majority of opinion polls, Mayawati exhorted to public not to go by the figures given by them as the ground reality was totally different.
The BSP chief said that she would write to the Election Commission seeking a ban on opinion polls as they worked to swing the election in favour of the ruling party.
Not forgetting the Muslims, the BSP chief promised to look after their welfare along with all minority communities.
Taking her political rivals to task, Mayawati launched a veiled attack on the Samajwadi Party, which, many of the prominent BSP leaders have joined in the recent past. “One party takes 'selfish' people of other parties and when it was in power, people were highly upset with the law and order in the state,” she said.
The BSP chief also scoffed at the promises made by Aam Admi Party (AAP) and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, saying that the party was promising things in UP which it had failed to implement even in Delhi.
Mayawati expressed her fear that the ruling BJP might misuse government machinery close to the elections to create an environment in its favour and if that did not work, it would try to vitiate the atmosphere by its communal discourse.
Congress, on the other hand, was responsible for the massive migration of people to other states, she said. Accusing the party of not having done anything for people, she said that both Congress and BJP did not even ensure employment for people.