SP swept away

There is more to Mayawati’s victory in Uttar Pradesh than her acclaimed caste combination strategy.

There is more to Mayawati’s victory in Uttar Pradesh than her acclaimed caste combination strategy. In fact, it was the polarisation of votes against Mulayam Singh Yadav that ensured an outright victory for BSP. Mulayam paid the price for the rampant corruption, crony capitalism, casteism and criminalisation that his government had blatantly indulged in. The voters were looking for a force capable of defeating Mulayam’s party. Mayawati, for all her much-admired caste combine, was an unwitting benefactor of this public outrage. One only needs look at the numbers for proof.

Aside from the 208 seats won by BSP, its candidates came second in 111 seats. In 60 seats, BSP candidates lost by less than 5,000 votes. As it turns out, people did try their best to vote out Mulayam, seat after seat, in Uttar Pradesh.

SP leaders are trying to find solace in the argument that their vote percentage did not go down. What they refuse to acknowledge is that the BSP actually secured 7 per cent more votes than the SP. The SP must also concede that its overall vote share includes the votes garnered by powerful individual leaders who had defected to the party to help increase its strength in the Vidhan Sabha, which had led to formation of the erstwhile government. Leaders like Naresh Aggarwal and Amarmani Tripathi can win an election any day, from any party.

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Had there been a survey to find the most corrupt government in India today, UP’s outgoing government would have easily ranked as number one. Take any significant policy initiative of the Mulayam Singh government in the last year, it invariably favours either an industrialist or a Bollywood superstar.

System restored

Within hours of winning the UP elections, the new chief minister, Mayawati, initiated action against corrupt politicians in the state. In my view, she should come down equally heavily on the main conduits of corruption, namely the senior bureaucrats who worked hand in glove with those politicians. The previous government nurtured senior IAS officers posted in Noida and Greater Noida and UPSIDC, whose only duty was to cook land-grab deals with builders and industrialists, get them expedited and make millions for themselves and their politician bosses.

Noida and Greater Noida were colonised to provide affordable housing for lower and middle-class people who could no longer afford houses in Delhi. A small clique of these corrupt IAS officers have ensured that a house in Noida today costs more than one in south Delhi. There are reports that these officers took commissions as hefty as Rs 1,000 per square metre from builders for the land deals, and even sold plots earmarked for IT and software companies to assorted liquor barons.

The writer is a Congress MP in Rajya Sabha