Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Tuesday promised to carve out a separate state of Bundelkhand if she became Prime Minister after the next Lok Sabha polls.

The Chief Minister also announced a slew of sops for the backward region, which has been suffering from drought for the last four years. In fact, the region has the lowest productivity in UP. Its irrigated area is 45.17 per cent of the area under cultivation — again the lowest in UP — and has 74.55 per cent work force engaged in non-productive agriculture.

But Bundelkhand is still BSP’s perfect state. Out of the 21 Assembly seats, spread across seven districts of the region, 14 went to the party in the last Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls last year. The region has a 25.14 per cent SC population — higher than the national and state average — of which a substantial chunk is made up of Ahirwars, Bundelkhand’s equivalent of Jatav, Mayawati’s own caste. Even in the districts falling in MP, the percentage of SCs is higher than the national average.

Mayawati also used her rally to project herself as the future Prime Minister. While keeping up the ‘Sarva Samaj’ rhetoric , she decided to target the Congress as the main enemy of the Dalits.

She again claimed that there was a plot to assassinate her and that the Centre had denied her SPG protection as part of a political conspiracy. She claimed that the Congress was misusing the official machinery to reopen cases against her. Stating that the Congress had always been an anti-Dalit party, she asked her followers not to forgive the party if the “plot” succeeded. Mayawati even ridiculed Rahul Gandhi for reportedly spending nights at the houses of UP Dalits, calling the whole exercise a “natak”.

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