Happy Birthday 'Behenji': Mayawati turns 55

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati turns 55 today. Over the past few years, her birthday celebrations have become synonymous with an ostentatious display of wealth and gifts like diamond-studded tiaras and gold and silver jewellery.

This year too the city of Lucknow is lit up and decorated for the occasion. The city has been adorned with big hoardings and banners sponsored by the BSP leaders to greet the Chief Minister on her birthday.(AFP photo)

Seen here, lighting near the statues of BSP supremo and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati and party founder Kanshiram on the occasion of her 55th birthday in Lucknow. (PTI Photo)

The city of Nawabs has virtually turned blue as all the streets have been decked up with blue lights, the official colour of the party. All the monuments, parks and statues of Dalit leaders have been illuminated. (PTI Photo)

A view of street decorated with posters of Mayawati for her birthday celebrations in Gomti Nagar area of Lucknow. (PTI Photo)

In this picture, an artist gives finishing touches to a painting of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati. (PTI Photo)

Mayawati's birthdays have usually been marred by controversies over collection of huge amounts of money and expensive gifts. The day also became notorious for her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) celebrating it as a fund raising event. It was only in 2010 that her birthday was a low-key affair.(AFP photo)

Last year on her birthday, Mayawati had planned to deflect focus from the many thousands of crores spent on memorials, statues and parks that have attracted widespread criticism.(AFP photo)

She celebrated the D-day in 2010 as 'Jan Kalyan Diwas' (public welfare day), and reached out with a Rs.300 a month scheme for families living below the poverty line (BPL). It was a stark contrast to the Arthik Sahyog Diwas until 2009 when party functionaries were given targets for fund collection.

“Unlike other parties, my party does not take money from big industrialists but bank upon donations from the common man,” Mayawati was once quoted as saying. (AFP photo)

She started in politics lambasting the upper castes, yet had no qualms about forming an alliance with the high caste Brahmins to secure her electoral victory in Year 2009. She has not been slow to court other minorities, including Muslims and Sikhs. (AFP photo)

Last year, Mayawati also laid foundation stones of numerous projects running into hundreds of crores of rupees on her birthday. These included roads measuring a whopping 6,300 km, more than a hundred bridges, by-pass building projects in towns with over one lakh population, several flyovers and an Arabic-Persian university in Lucknow. (AFP photo)

Often criticised for immortalizing herself through statues rather than doing something for the lesser mortals who have chosen her, Mayawati, or Behenji, as she is reverentially called by her followers, has ensured her partymen and sundry babus pay due obeisance to her. (AFP photo)

Jamborees marking Mayawati's birthday saw life-size cakes and fancy parties, —a mayajaal of sorts spun by a leader who has occupied the top seat of Uttar Pradesh, three times now. (AFP photo)

Clad in pink and festooned with diamonds, often surrounded by lifesize cutouts of herself, Mayawati has always believed in celebrating her birthdays Queen-size, in keeping with her superstar status. (AFP photo)

Year 2009, though touted as "subdued" by Mayawati's standards, saw her supporters leaving no stone unturned to ensure as much glitterati on the occasion. The entire Lucknow was painted blue, the colour of BSP's flag. Public places like the ‘Prena Sthal', ‘Parivartan Chowk' and ‘Ambedkar Sthal' in Lucknow were lit up on the eve of her birthday. (AFP photo)

Born in Delhi in 1956, Mayawati, the daughter of a government clerk and a housewife, became UP's youngest chief minister at the age of 39 in 1995, under Kanshi Ram's patronage. She studied law with ambitions to become a magistrate and taught before entering politics. (AFP photo)

Kanshi Ram is believed to have told his protege that she was destined to become a queen who would control the fate of many district magistrates rather than be one of them. (AFP photo)

The dream became a reality in 1995, when she took over as the first Dalit chief minister to head any of the state governments. Although her first government did not last more than four months, her political journey had begun. (AFP photo)

"Behenji" as she is endearingly called by millions of her supporters, returned as chief minister two years later at the head of a BSP coalition government with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), this time for six months. (AFP photo)

After the state assembly elections in 2002 her political acumen came to be recognised by her fiercest critics and she formed a government once again in alliance with BJP. But the coalition government broke up 18 months later when Mayawati was accused of approving a massive shopping complex near the Taj Mahal in violation of laws protecting the famous monument. (AFP photo)

Sweeping aside the opposition to secure an outright majority in the 2007 state elections in Uttar Pradesh. The victory, secured with the support of upper-caste Brahmins, took her rivals by surprise and put her in a position where she could realistically start to think about the premiership. (AFP photo)

But her hopes of becoming India's first "untouchable" prime minister were dealt a serious setback after the Congress-party led coalition comfortably sailed to power in recent general elections. (AFP photo)