Samajwadi Party flays Maya for 'unsympathetic' remarks

Lucknow, Jan 18: Denouncing Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati for saying that the self immolation by a Samajwadi Party (SP) worker was due to 'personal reasons,' the SP today termed her statement as the 'height of insensitivity.'

''On January 15, SP worker Ranvijay Singh had ended his life by immolation at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi while protesting the 'anti-people' and 'undemocratic' policies of the Mayawati government,'' party state unit spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said here this afternoon. However, the CM has called his act, as a step taken out of personal reasons, which is an 'insensitive' and 'in-human' statement, he underlined.

''Instead of expressing grief on his demise, Ms Mayawati is passing such statements...which is quite sad,'' Mr Chaudhary added.

On her 52nd birthday, Ms Mayawati house arrested SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, which was against the democratic rights, he charged. Categorically denying any political overtones in the self-immolation incident, Mayawati had yesterday said such attempt by an SP leader was due to personal reasons.

Ranvijay Singh of Sultanpur district in UP had immolated him self at a party demonstration and later died in RML hospital, New Delhi, the following day.
''It is absolutely wrong to suggest that the incident was a fall out of some false media reports that SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav had been kept under house arrest on that day,'' she had said in a statement issued here last evening.

He had committed the act out of his personal reasons, the statement added. Mr Yadav was never kept under house arrest, while the security was tightened because SP women activists had announced to meet the Governor to hand over some memorandum, she had clarified.

UNI