Why is Mayawati Silent About the Scams?

Lucknow: The skeletons are tumbling out of the corruption cupboard but Uttar Pradesh’s former ruling party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), is unusually quiet — not even reacting to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav‘s allegation that it was involved in scams of over Rs 40,000 crore.

Akhilesh Yadav late Tuesday accused his predecessor Mayawati of presiding over the plunder of the state and said her government was involved in scams of over Rs 40,000 crore. Instead of giving an angry reaction, as she is prone to, the normally pugnacious Mayawati, who is now in the Rajya Sabha, has been quiet.

And her party has gone into a huddle in the state, trying to fight the growing public perception in the wake of evidence that the Mayawati government was mired in a series of political and financial irregularities.

Even BSP leaders like Mayawati’s close aide Swamy Prasad Maurya, who has been accusing Akhilesh Yadav and his Samajwadi Party (SP) of indulging in political vendetta, has chosen not to speak on the issue.

A senior BSP leader, on condition of anonymity, said that much of the party was still smarting from the debacle in the state assembly polls two months ago and was not mobilised enough to take on the onslaught by the SP government. The party’s tally in the assembly slipped from 206 to a paltry 85.