'Dalit ki beti' Mayawati serving the rich: SP chief

Lucknow: Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav on Tuesday hit out at BSP chief Mayawati, alleging that the 'dalit ki beti' was in fact serving the rich.

Addressing a convention of 17 Other Backward Castes (OBC) organised by state Mining Minister Gayatri Prasad Prajapati at party headquarters here, the SP leader said that Mayawati had failed to serve the interests of the Dalits in the state.

"We had given facilities of Dalits to 17 OBCs in the state, while Maywati scrapped the provisions after becoming the Chief Minster. When we raised the matter in Delhi with the then Manmohan Singh government, the Centre also supported the BSP," he said.

"When I tried to get him (Manmohan) understand, he said it was necessary to take her (Mayawati) along to run the government and continued to please her," he said.

Maywati's BSP had given outside support to the previous UPA government.

Yadav said that although the BSP leader calls herself 'Dalit ki beti', she works for rich.

He assured the representatives of the OBCs at the convention that they would be provided with facilities at par with Dalits along with including them in the Scheduled Castes (SC) list.

Yadav said that he would take up the matter with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and his son Akhilesh Yadav soon.

"We will talk to High Court and Supreme Court and put in a battery of lawyers for the issue. We will also fight in Delhi. You will progress when you all get status of dalits (SC)", he said.

The effort for inclusion of the 17 OBCs in the SC list was initiated in 2005, when the then SP government headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav had amended the UP Public Services (Reservation for Schedule Castes, Schedule Tribes and Other Backward Castes) Act 1994, to include the 'most backward castes' in the SC category.

The castes in question include- Banjara, Kahar, Kashyap, Kewat, Nishad, Bind, Bhar, Prajapati, Rajbhar, Batham, Gaur, Tura, Majhi, Mallah, Kumhar, Dheemar and Machhua.

In 2012, after SP government came to power in the state, it again sent a resolution to Centre for inclusion of the 17 OBCs in SC list but it has not yet been accepted.

Defending his grand 76th birthday celebration in Saifai, Mulayam said, "even those on constitution post have problems with the birthday celebration. They don't know about me. I belong to a very poor family of farmers. What problem do they have if my birthday was celebrated?"

However, he did not elaborate whom he was referring to.

The SP chief's birthday bash drew flak from the opposition which questioned the "ostentatious" display of wealth and "garish" expenditure running into crores of rupees when the state was grappling with drought situation. 

: Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav on Tuesday trained his guns on arch rival Mayawati, accusing her of siding with the upper castes and leaving the backwards and scheduled castes and tribes in the lurch.

At an Other Backward Classes (OBC) convention, organised by the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP), Mulayam Singh took on the Bahujan Samaj Party chief directly, claiming that the real welfare of Dalits was being done by his party-led Uttar Pradesh government.

While Mayawati and Mulayam Singh share an old hostility, Yadav has rarely attacked Mayawati by name and has always chosen to target her party instead.

Delighted to see the crowd at the convention, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said such a large turnout was set to give sleepless nights to his opponents and the claimants of Dalit welfare.

He also targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying till the SP "captures power at Delhi" welfare of marginalised sections of society and comprehensive development of the state was not possible.

Calling Modi as "collector saheb", Mulayam Singh said the prime minister had made hollow promises to people in the country while the SP was always firm on its commitments made during elections.

The state government, run by his son and UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, has fulfilled most of its electoral promises, he added.