ETAWAH, June 20: In an astute political move, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, yesterday made a dent in Defence Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's territory by granting the status of tehsil to Jaswantnagar, his home constituency. The announcement came at a rally which was held to counter Mulayam's rally in Lucknow yesterday.Mulayam's native village, Saifai, which is only 20 km from Jaswantnagar, had been made a tehsil by him about three years ago. While Saifai was developed into a ``model town'' equipped with a modern sport stadium, several guest houses, an airstrip, a degree college, a swimming pool and an engineering college, Jaswantnagar was completely ignored.``I am not withdrawing the status of tehsil from Saifai because it was not granted with Mulayam's money but with the tax-payers' money,'' said the Chief Minister while sanctioning grants worth over Rs 2.5 crore for development of Etawah.All the while she was keeping a watch on Mulayam's rally. ``My helicopter hovered over Mulayam's rally in Lucknow twice. There were no more than 10,000 persons, and here you can very well see a sea of humans, at least three lakh,'' she declared amid thunderous applause.``Mulayam ki rajniti bas dus hazar aadmi laane ke baad khatam ho gayee,'' (Mulayam is politically finished since he could not attract more than 10,000 people), Mayawati said in a triumphant tone. She said, ``Hulla bolne wale chup ho gaye. Muthibhar logon se kya hulla bola jayega?'' (Those crying for a `Hulla Bol' stir by the Samajwadi Party have fallen silent because a handful of people cannot do much) she said.Showering her largesse on the pocket borough of the Defence Minister, she sanctioned Rs 1 crore for a hospital and 500 handpumps besides clearing a proposal for an overbridge. She also couldn't resist changing the names of a number of Government buildings in the district and named them after ideologues of the BSP.No halla at rally ``We don't want to invoke Article 356 against the Uttar Pradesh Government. The public pressure generated by our `Hulla Bol' rally will itself cause the Government to fall,'' Samajwadi Party chief and Defence Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav said here on Wednesday.If public pressure is the only criterion for the survival or fall of a government, then Mulayam Singh failed in his gambit as the crowd at Mayawati's Etawah rally was at least thrice more than at Mulayam's rally. Transporters, fearing state reprisal, refused to lend buses for Mulayam's rally.
