The Hindu : SP to release another 'video on Mayawati'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 06, 2003

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Other States - Uttar Pradesh

SP to release another 'video on Mayawati'

By J.P. Shukla

LUCKNOW APRIL 5. The Samajwadi Party has been preparing to release yet another video CD to "expose the real face" of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mayawati. And this time, the Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to be placed in a more embarrassing situation with Ms. Mayawati having been shown making uncharitable remarks against the religious practices of the Hindus. The BJP may find it difficult to explain how a party wedded to the ideals of Hindutva could decide to go along with someone so aggressively opposed to its thinking.

The CD, according to Samajwadi Party leaders here, might be exhibited publicly a little ahead of the April 14 "Mahapardaphash rally" of the Bahujan Samaj Party planned to expose "the SP conspiracy against the U.P. Government".

Last month, the Samajwadi Party had released a video tape recording of a BSP meeting at which Ms. Mayawati was shown asking her party MLAs and MPs to pay to the party funds from commissions they received from utilisation of their Constituency Fund.

The Samajwadi Party now plans to release the second tape some time next week and this time it will be shown to people across the State through mobile vans. The contents of the tape form part of a speech delivered by Ms. Mayawati at Ambedkar Nagar in February 2001. The 40-minute tape starts with the Chief Minister telling her party workers how important money is for the functioning of the BSP and "to enable it to face the Manuwadi parties".

She says that her party needs Rs. 3.5 crores every year to run the organisation and this is to be arranged by no one else but the party workers. There are two ways to collect funds: through annual membership fees and through the bags which the cadres present to the BSP leaders.She is also shown discouraging Dalits from making offerings before Hindu deities. Instead, they should be motivated to donate to party funds. Her argument, which the BJP could hardly relish, is that "the offerings made to stone idols are devoured by street dogs — and a god who is unable to protect his own offerings could never provide protection to people making offerings to him".

The tape shows the Chief Minister giving details of how political outfits like the Republican Party could not survive and why the BSP had been successful in playing its role in the country's politics.

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