The credit of naming the newly-built Telangana Secretariat after B.R. Ambedkar and installing his statue should go to Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) cadre, said its supremo Mayawati in Hyderabad on Sunday.
Addressing a meeting of party activists at Saroornagar, she said that the KCR government erected Babasaheb’s statue and named the Secretariat after him, as BSP was becoming a force to reckon with in Telangana. The statue installation and Secretariat naming were done by KCR government for his political gains, she said.
Appealing to SC, ST and OBC voters not to fall for such gimmicks of KCR, the BSP supremo exhorted her party activists to make all-out efforts to bring the party into power in ensuing Telangana Assembly elections. “BSP Telangana president R.S. Praveen Kumar would be the chief ministerial candidate in the coming Assembly elections,” she announced amidst applause of thousands of party workers.
Recalling policy decisions taken during her stint as four times CM of Uttar Pradesh, Ms. Mayawati said that KCR had copied BSP’s programme of allocating three acres of agricultural land to each Dalit. “While we did it practically in UP, here in Telangana it is being practiced only on papers,” she said.
Appealing to people to be cautious about KCR stating that he was “doing dramas of introducing policies for the upliftment of the oppressed sections”, she said that “Opposition parties were conspiring to split the Dalit vote base.”
“This is done in all States where BSP is getting strong, purely to split the Dalit votes and ensure party becomes weak,” she said. Along with KCR, national parties like BJP and Congress did not wholeheartedly want Dalits and suppressed sections to progress and secure political power, she added.
“These parties are fielding candidates from the Dalit community in constituencies where BSP is strong and thus, conspiring to defeat BSP nominees. Such parties never raise their voice against atrocities on Dalits. They even do not want Dalits to raise their voice,” she said.
Ms. Mayawati said that KCR kept silent when recently killers of IAS officer Krishnaiah were released in Bihar by the government there by tweaking rules.
She told the people of Telangana to remember that it was BSP which first supported in Parliament the creation of separate Telangana State. But the plight of Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs, Muslims, Christians and other minorities remained unchanged in the newly- created State of Telangana.
The party’s Telangana president and former IPS officer R.S. Praveen Kumar, visibly jubilant over presence of massive numbers of party workers, appealed to them not to sleep till the party’s blue flag was hoisted at CM’s camp-office-cum-residence Pragathi Bhavan.
