Maya appeals to party to take upper caste people

Bhubaneswar, Jan 20: Bahujan Samaj Party national president Mayawati today appealed to her party cadres to involve upper caste people with the party ideology and policy to capture power both at the Centre and in the state.

Addressing a rally of BSP workers here Ms Mayawati said the need to take the upper caste along was necessary as the party could not come to power at the Centre without their support. She said her party was not against the upper caste people and was in favour of a ''Sarbajan Bhatrubhav society''.
The BSP supremo said many upper caste people were holding key posts in the party as well as in the Uttar Pradesh government.

Though both the parliamentary and state assembly elections were a year away she announced launching of the election campaign of her party from here today. She promised to provide reservations for upper caste poor on the basis of their economic backwardness if her party was voted to power. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister claimed that her government was the first in the country to implement the reservation for upper caste poor in her state.

Ms Mayawati further said her government had also provided reservation to the SC,ST and OBCs in the private sector and promised to implement the system in the country. The BSP supremo held the 'faulty' policy of both the state and the central government responsible for the spread of naxalite movement and rise in violent terrorist incidents in the country.

She said youths joined the naxalite movements as successive governments had failed to provide them employment and solve their justified basic problems. Ms Mayawati alleged that parties like the BJP, Congress and their alliance partners who fought elections with financial support from capitalists were busy formulating policy to appease the capitalists.

''But BSP wants to come to power with the help of its workers and formulate its economic policies for the socio-economic development of poor free from any capitalist influence,'' she said.

Like in Uttar Pradesh, she also promised to provide three acres of government land lying unused free of cost to the landless poor to cultivate if her party came to power in Orissa.

UNI