Mayawati starts soft-pitched poll campaign for 2022 elections
LUCKNOW: Sounding the poll bugle at a mammoth public rally here on Saturday, October 9, 2021, Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) chief Mayawati gave an indication 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 2022 assembly election, her government would not stop any of the ongoing development projects.
Ram in Lucknow on Saturday. (Photo | PTI)
“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 the Centre and the state won’t be stopped. Unlike BJP and SP, I won’t change the names of places unnecessarily. All existing schemes will be reviewed and the good ones will be extended,” she said.
Mayawati announced that her party would contest the upcoming polls on the issue of jobs to youth. 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 deprived and downtrodden”. “All the welfare schemes started during the BSP rule, which were stopped by the BJP and SP, will be restarted.
A commission to consider all demands being put up by the 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 repaired.
Mayawati also opposed the airing of opinion polls ahead of UP polls. She cited the example of West Bengal where she claimed that the actual result was contrary to majority of opinion polls. The BSP chief said that she would write to the Election Commission seeking a ban on opinion polls. Earlier, at a Brahmins conclave on September 7, Mayawati had also promised that rather than building memorials, she would, if voted power, focus on changing the face of UP.