Chandigarh: BSP supremo Mayawati on Sunday
accused the Congress of fuelling farmers` protests on the
issue of land acquisition and said her political opponents
were hatching a conspiracy to weaken her party.
"The Congress was only responsible for the demonstrations
by the peasantry," she said referring to the recent farmers`
agitation in Bhatta and Parsaul villages in Greater Noida in
Uttar Pradesh.
She advocated a uniform land acquisition policy for the
entire country. "We will raise the issue in Parliament for
bringing uniform land acquisition policy," the UP chief
minister said at the North Zone convention of the party here.
She also accused its political opponents of hatching
conspiracies to weaken the party and asserted that it would
not bow down to any such tactics.
"After BSP came to power in Uttar Pradesh, the opposition
parties with caste-based mindset tried to inflate minor
incidents to make the party instable," she said.
Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi was arrested on
the night of May 11 by the UP police after he had slipped
unnoticed in pre-dawn hours to the affected area in support of
the farmers agitating against the state`s land acquisition
process for a expressway project.
Gandhi, who had spent nearly 19 hours at Bhatta-Parsaul,
the epicentre of the farmers` agitation, was arrested and
released later.
Taking the land acquisition issue in UP to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh`s door, Gandhi had on May 16 complained to him
about about alleged "rape" of women and "murder" of farmers
there, a charge denied by the Mayawati government.
Reviving the Bhatta-Parsaul farmers` issue, Congress
leader Sachin Pilot had on May 22 visited protestors lodged in
Dasna Jail and was arrested on way to the violence-hit areas
in Greater Noida to meet families of those injured during the
agitation over land acquisition. Four persons, including two
policemen, were killed on May 7 during the Bhatta-Parsaul
agitation.
PTI
