New Delhi:
It's vintage Mayawati. At a public rally, she thundered, "law and order situation will worsen if Dalit memorials are stopped".
The Chief Minister's threat came just hours after her own government apologized to the Supreme Court for Mayawati's numerous and expensive memorials.
The Supreme Court had stopped Mayawati's government from constructing memorials, to Dalit leaders, including herself in Lucknow. The order was issued on September 8. Uttar Pradesh officials accepted this, but media reports, including one by NDTV, caught the government red-handed, continuing with the work at these parks.
A furious Supreme Court slammed Uttar Pradesh, asking her government "not to play with fire." That seemed to do the trick. Within hours, the parks were emptied, construction workers disappeared.
Mayawati's memorials are alleged to have cost Uttar Pradesh more than Rs 2,000 crores already. The Supreme Court has said tax payers money cannot be spent without appropriate budgets and documentation.
In an affidavit sent to the Supreme Court on Thursday, Chief Secretary Atul Kumar Gupta wrote, "It is respectfully submitted that if any transgression has occurred, I tender an apology for the same, and humbly submit that (if any transgression has happened), the same was entirely unintended."
But at her rally, Mayawati expressed no regrets, arguing that the Congress also spends crores on memorials. She highlighted the Rs 350-crore statue of Shivaji that the Congress government wants to build off Mumbai's Marine Drive.