Ranchi: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati said here that her party would contest all Assembly seats in Jharkhand.
Addressing a rally Saturday to mark the launch of BSP's election campaign, at the Shaheed Maidan here, Mayawati said: "If BSP were to form a government in this state, you can rest assured that you will also witness a transformation of this state in the same manner as I have done in Uttar Pradesh."
She sought to blame the backwardness of Jharkhand on "misrule by different political parties, particularly the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)."
Mayawati added: "Successive governments have only used the huge population of tribals and minorities in this state only as a vote bank."
Accusing successive governments of having "not done anything to take this state out of its economic and social backwardness", the BSP supremo said: "Poverty and unemployment had driven some people of this area to turn into Naxalites."
She however sought to add: "If BSP were to come to power here, I would make it a point to bring these misdirected Naxalites back to the mainstream of development."
The five-phased Assembly polls will start in Jharkhand November 25.
IANS
First Published: Sunday, November 22, 2009, 10:17