BSP president Mayawati gives call to oust Telangana CM KCR

Calling the efforts made by Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao to help Dalits as “political selfishness”, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) national president Mayawati appealed to the Bahujan community to oust him. She was speaking at the Telangana Bharosa Sabha held in Hyderabad on Sunday, May 7. Referring to the welfare schemes of the KCR government for Dalits like Dalita Bandhu, the installation of the 125-feet Ambedkar statue, and also naming the newly-constructed Secretariat after the architect of the Indian Constitution, Mayawati said that all the credit should go to the BSP and not to the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS). The latter was seeking to woo Dalits, Scheduled Tribes and OBC communities through such initiatives for its own political ends, she charged.

“Fearing as it does the BSP which is becoming more and more popular every day, the present state government has to do all this and more. When the Chief Minister revealed on two or three occasions that they wanted to change the Constitution itself, our people fought back strongly. Realising the strength of the people’s sentiments, they have started this drama to please you people,” Mayawati claimed.

Mayawati also slammed KCR for being silent on the release of Anand Mohan Singh, a former MP convicted for the murder of G Krishnaiah, by the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar. Krishnaiah, a native of Telangana and a Dalit, was the District Magistrate in Bihar’s Gopalgunj when he was killed in 1994.

Recounting the BSP’s contribution in the formation of Telangana as a separate state, Mayawati said that the BSP was the first party in Parliament to speak in favour of the creation of a separate state of Telangana.

At the meeting, Mayawati also declared that police-turned-politician RS Praveen Kumar will be the Chief Minister of Telangana if their party comes to power  in the state.  At present, RS Praveen is the Telangana state president of the BSP. He belongs to the Madiga community, categorised as a Scheduled Caste.

“I want to declare in advance that when we get the opportunity to form the government here, the BSP’s state president RS Praveen Kumar would be chosen as the Chief Minister,” Mayawati said. She lauded him for opting to retire voluntarily from the Indian Police Service (IPS) and dedicating himself to the BSP’s growth in Telangana. “I have full confidence that after occupying the Chief Minister post, he too will take care of our [SC, ST, OBC] people on priority, like [we did] in UP. Also am sure that he will regard and respect the saints and revolutionary icons, like in UP,” Mayawati said.

The former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh expressed her happiness that both Praveen Kumar and BSP state coordinator and Rajya Sabha MP Ramji Gautam were working tirelessly to achieve better results in the upcoming Assembly elections and the Lok Sabha elections than in the past. Telangana is expected to go to polls in December.

She also accused the Congress and BJP of being “casteist” parties that did not “wholeheartedly desire the progress of the SC, ST, OBC, Muslims, and other religious minorities,” and came down heavily on the Congress party for not giving due recognition to Bahujan leaders like Ambedkar and Kanshiram when they were in power at the Centre.

Mayawati also alleged that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were the cause of the BSP’s poor performance in the elections. “BSP is not getting weak. Until elections were conducted on ballot paper, our vote share had increased. But since the introduction of EVMs, it's been going down steadily – we are unable to understand where our votes are going. Earlier Congress was rigging EVMs, now the BJP is doing it. But a time will come when such rigging will fail, so let us not lose heart, but work hard,” she told her party workers.

She also wanted the depressed sections, including the weaker sections from the upper castes, to come together, become a force, and form their own government.