Mayawati calls the promise a ‘cruel joke’ on the poor, the sort that was played by Indira Gandhi’s ‘garibi hatao’ and the BJP’s ‘achhe din’ slogans.
New Delhi: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati Tuesday castigated Rahul Gandhi for his minimum income promise to the poor, calling it the sort of “cruel joke” that was earlier played by his late grandmother Indira Gandhi’s “garibi hatao” and the BJP’s “achhe din” slogans.
Her stinging attack on Gandhi not only reflected the deepening divide in the anti-BJP camp but also heralded the entry of another player in the prime ministerial race.
Mayawati is learnt to be furious about Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s appointment as AICC general secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, a gambit by the Congress that could potentially damage the SP-BSP’s electoral prospects by eating into their votebanks.
The two UP-centric parties had rebuffed the Congress by keeping it out of their alliance, based on their assessment that the grand old party would contribute little to their electoral kitty. A Congress tally of below 100 across the country would suit the prime ministerial hopefuls in the opposition camp such as Mayawati and Mamata Banerjee, even as they set out on an ambitious mission to dislodge the BJP from power at the Centre.
Wary of their ambitions, the Congress is going for the jugular in the Lok Sabha elections, choosing to contest alone in most states to try and maximise its seats.
Also read: Priyanka Gandhi’s formal entry is a part of Rahul’s aggressive strategy for PM bid
‘Do it in states first’
Addressing a rally in Chhattisgarh Monday, Gandhi promised a guaranteed minimum income to the poor, which would come directly in their bank accounts if the Congress was voted to power in May.
Reacting to this a day later, Mayawati said that the entire country was “shocked and apprehensive”. She labelled it a similar “fake” and “cruel joke” to the one played by Indira Gandhi’s “garibi hatao” slogan in 1971, and by the BJP, which had promised to bring “achhe din” by giving Rs 15-20 lakh to the poor out of the black money recovered from abroad.
She said the Congress should first implement poverty alleviation programmes in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Punjab, so that people can believe that it could be done nationally.
“Anyway, in terms of credibility, the records of both the Congress and the BJP have not been good,” she said, calling both parties two sides of the same coin.
Also read: Rahul Gandhi’s minimum income for poor faces 3 challenges – cost, target & delivery
Change of strategy
Mayawati, who had once sacked her party vice-president for attacking Gandhi, has been showing signs of her intent to be equidistant from both the BJP and the Congress.
At the press conference on 12 January to declare the SP-BSP alliance, she had drawn a parallel between the Modi government’s Rafale fighter jet deal and the Rajiv Gandhi government’s Bofors gun deal.
Tuesday’s statement suggested that she was preparing for an all-out war with the Congress too — months after holding Sonia Gandhi’s hand aloft in solidarity with anti-BJP parties at Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy’s swearing-in ceremony in Bengaluru.
It is evident she has kept her option of tying up with BJP open.
The Congress will need all its maturity and experience, also a little help from Shri Akhilesh Yadav, to deal constructively with Ms Mayawati. She played spoiler in the recent Assembly elections, could cause more harm in UP. In an act of desperation, she could reach out to the BJP as well.