‘I could have fulfilled Sonia’s wish of going to jail’

“Congress party workers brought their president to Rae Bareli who did a drama of going to jail without any reason and returned to Delhi yesterday,” Mayawati said at a press conference.

“Congress is worried only about Rae Bareli but I am worried about the whole of Uttar Pradesh,” she said, while countering Gandhi’s charges after her government cancelled a land allotment for the railway coach factory.

The Chief Minister said, “if we wanted to display the power of the state administration, then we would not have allowed her (Gandhi) to conduct a road show in Rae Bareli and would have arrested her.”

But “we had only asked her not to hold a public rally in Lalganj following tension there. The prohibitory orders were not imposed anywhere else in the district,” she said.

Mayawati announced a ‘maharally’ to apprise people about the ‘impediments created by the Centre’ in developmental schemes.

On alleged protests by farmers on the acquisition of their land for the factory, Mayawati said that she had constituted a committee under Principal Secretary Netram to inquire into objections of the farmers that will submit its report to the government within three days.

“Cabinet will decide on the issue later on”, Mayawati said, claiming that the land allotment was not approved by the Cabinet due to a ‘goof-up’ by officials of previous regime.

Taking a pot-shot at the Congress chief for terming Rae Bareli and Amethi as ‘karmbhoomi of Firoze, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi and now that of her and Rahul’, Mayawati asked as to how many jobs ‘have been given to people of Rae Bareli in past 44 years of Congress rule in Uttar Pradesh and 48 years of rule at the Centre.’

“The bhoomipujan for the project is a mere drama for taking political mileage ahead of Lok Sabha elections,” the BSP supremo said.

“Like Saifai was entire state for Samajwadi Party, Raebareli and Amethi are the entire state for Congress. There are already a number of factories in the district, Congress should think beyond Rae Bareli and avoid regional imbalance,” Mayawati said.

“Despite this the state government is giving maximum electricity to Rae Bareli as compared to other districts,” she said, adding unlike Congress, ‘BSP is not doing politics on issues of development’.

Mayawati alleged that only the Congress party people were benefiting in Rae Bareli while ‘the common people mostly dalits and minorities are still living in pitiable condition in Gandhi’s karmabhoomi’.

She alleged that the Congress had put impediments in schemes like Ganga and Yamuna expressways.

“This project in Rae Bareli and a similar project at Bihar were launched simultaneously by Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. While the work has started in Bihar, nothing except false propaganda was initiated by the Congress here.”

She advised Congress to set up 50 factories in the backward Purvanchal (eastern Uttar Pradesh) and Bundelkhand regions and said the state would provide land in these areas on priority basis.