The mysterious Dalit Queen

By Dilip Awasthi

It is not often that you get to sit next to her. But if you do, you cannot miss that trench-like fateline flowing through her small chubby palm. A palmist would find this extra-ordinary and also the fact that her hand is embedded with just a small cluster of equally prominent and deep lines. She is born lucky, undoubtedly if you look at the way she has held the reins of the most populous state of the country thrice.

It is difficult to site her in the first instance amidst the maze of quickly moving, alert security guards and a fleet of cautiously attentive bureaucrats flanking her. Just a five feet two inches, she breezes through oozing with confidence and looking straight ahead. Such confidence can rarely come from merely holding a high office. It emanates from the demeanor with which she runs it. Meet `Behenji' (Sister). That his how the Bahujan Samaj Party order has nick-named Mayawati. The 47-year-old arrogant woman defies all logic, which make a present-day politician. On each of the three occasions she has donned the mantle of Uttar Pradesh chief minister out of peculiar defaults. She possesses the ability to change the course of the political game any day. Long-term alliance with BJP in UP, she says today but tomorrow could be a new day. This is the kind of carte du jour Mayawati relishes.

Currently in high demand for at least the topbrass of the BJP, the lady in the land of Ram has enough and more reasons to smile. The land of Ram, however, is not as lucky as its current mentor. If Mayawati’s stars are shinning, Uttar Pradesh’s fate turns dull. Development goes for a six, ongoing projects take a backseat, infrastructure starts cracking at the seams and administration is hijacked by personal or political consideration. All Mayawati regimes including the current one have had a clear-cut, one-point agenda – dalit assertion. With every single hour spent in the corridors of power, Mayawati has grown in stature to become the aggressive face of Dalit ( weaker sections) politics and she brazenly flaunts it.

Born out of compulsion in the face of a hung house once again following the confused verdict of 2002 Vidhan Sabha elections, Mayawati yet again emerged as the best bet for the BJP to stay afloat in the turbulent political ocean of U.P. After having dumped her during June-October 1995 in the course of just 104 days and then through March-September in 1997 in just six months, BJP one again kneeled down to install Mayawati as the chief minister for a third term. The fact that most of the state leaders including outgoing chief minister Rajnath Singh were seething at the thought, Mayawati pulled the right strings and managed an outright support from the party’s central high command. Just days before the pact between the two parties was revived, BJP’s then state president told newsmen, "Cadre kahti hai ki agar atma hatya karni ho to party Mayawati ke saath jaye. (The cadre feel that we should go along and make Mayawati Chief Minister once again only if the party wants to commit suicide.)

Suicide surely it has proved to be because the BJP has stood as a mute spectator as the Mayawati bulldozer has recklessly ploughed through, deracinating whatever little was left of the once famed saffron wave. Meaningless survival has never been Mayawati’s motto. She has always lived dangerously but with full grit and determination till its curtains. Unlike the past two stints, this ongoing tenure is her first genuine stay in power. In a state prone to highly fragile political stability, she has completed more than an year in the hot seat and still is going strong, on her own terms. With BJP’s full participation her government has run through rough weather on at least half a dozne occasions, many of them because of dissidence in the BJP itself, but she has steered her ship clear deftly.

The question that often strikes political observers here is about the looming losses that cloud the BJP’s prospects rather than the monumental harvest which Mayawati’s BSP stands to reap. She has done everything which has embarrassed and in many cases harmed BJP’s holier-than- thou reputation. The former schoolteacher from Ghaziabad has taught a lesson or two to her alliance partners as well as her rivals. She has run the state at will building a strong ring of dalit officials from the chief secretary to the lowest official in a key position down to the village thana level. Effecting more than whopping 1,200 transfers in the course of her first six months, she has held a complete disregard of the requests and wishes of senior state BJP leaders, barring a few exceptions. Corrupt officials have ruled the roost as they have offered huge sums to seek any groovy official position which was equally rewarding.

Her shows to publicly exhibit her strength have been extravagant in terms of money squandered from the governmental coffers and also in terms of glitter and glamour. Her three rallies in Lucknow including the one held in January this year to celebrate her birthday have been held both her alliance partner and her detractors in a complete awe. Painted blue all-over, Lucknow has often looked like Mayawati’s personal portrait gallery. Her birthday bash alone has cost more than Rs 50 crores to the government. She stood on the air-conditioned dias draped all over with diamonds. The glistening necklace she wore over her pink designers kurta was said to be studded with diamonds worth Rs 3 crores. Hue and cry from the opposition ranks followed quite obviously. The Allahabad high court on March 5 had directed the state government and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India to file separate counter-affidavits within four weeks on a public interest litigation alleging misappropriation of public money in the birthday celebrations. But who cares, at least Mayawati doesn’t.

Out of the many dressings-down, which the BJP has received from Mayawati, at least the state leaders will remember the Raja Bhaiya case as a virtual nightmare. Raghuraj Pratap Singh, better known as Raja Bhaiya, the controversial independent MLA from Kunda, had been a minister in successive BJP regimes since 1997. He was the key politician along with Rajnath Singh to have organized the group of thakur MLAs, which eventually saved the Kalyan Singh government in 1997 when Mayawati walked out of the alliance. Mayawati refused to consider him for a ministerial berth mainly because of his proximity to former chief minister Rajnath Singh. Frustrated Raja Bhaiya, who had been heading a band of 11 of the 16 independents in the house, decided to revolt. On October 24 last year he made eight independent MLAs withdraw their support to the present government leaving it with a razor-thin majority in the house of 403 members. There were rumours that a group of 30 odd thakur MLAs of the BJP were ready in the flanks to settle scores with Mayawati.

They failed to bully her. Instead Raja Bhaiya was arrested in November and about 20 criminal cases were lodged against him. On the eve of Republic Day, the police slapped POTA on him and his father. According to the police, a huge cache of arms, which included an AK-56 rifle, was recovered from his house. The police claimed to have also recovered from the premises of his house a skull and bones, suspected to be that of one Santosh Kumar, who was allegedly killed by Raja Bhaiyya and his henchmen in 2001. The revolt was nipped in the bud.

The BJP feared that the arrest would alienate upper caste Thakurs. Party state president Vinay Katiyar and former chief minister Rajnath Singh strongly condemned the use of POTA, but Mayawati was unrelenting. She said she had ample evidence that Raja Bhaiyya and his father were plotting to eliminate her on Republic Day. Said BJP state chief Katiyar,"How can invoking POTA against a 73-year-old man can be justified in any way.". Rajnath Singh, whose proximity to Raja Bhaiyya is well established, said: "This is gross misuse of POTA and has to be stopped." But instead of holding sympathies for them, the BJP high-command silenced them and allowing a free field for Mayawati.

Her vindictive ways have at times suited the BJP also. In March this year Mulayam Singh’s Samajvadi Party released video tapes of her speeches exhorting her party legislators to divert parts of the government development funds to the party’s coffers. To settle scores, Mayawati instantly announced to hold a “Pardafash” ( Expose) rally on April 14. Amidst a huge crowd Mayawati announced that the government had filed 137 cases against Mulayam Singh Yadav for the alleged misuse of government’s discretionary fund during his 1995 regime. Releasing two separate lists of 177 beneficiaries, Mayawati alleged Mulayam Singh Yadav circumvented rules of CM's discretionary fund nearly Rs 27 million was sanctioned to 'undeserving' people. In turn Yadav dubbed the cases against him as a 'political vendetta', dismissed the charges as 'baseless' and dared Mayawati government to arrest him.

Eversince the two parties are locked headon. Mulayam Singh is backed by 188 MLAs, including 142 of his own party, in the assembly and has been making desperate moves to upset Mayawati’s apple cart but without any success. Shaken by the initial revolt by the Raja Bhaiya, Mayawati had consolidated her government’s position by engineering defections in the Congress. In January eight Congress MLAs left their party to support her government. The same eneving she secured the resignations of 12 Bahujan Samaj Party ministers to make room for the Congress rebels, virtually the same formula, which Kalyan Singh adopted to save his government in 1997. When 14 MLAs of Chowdhry Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal withdrew support from her government in May, Mayawati refused to postpone her 16-day foreign juncket. She was confident that she would still sail with her head held high enough. She has returned and proved herself right.

Some ardent BJP supporters will vouch for two categorical gains out of the support-Mayawati gameplan. One that she is after Mulayam Singh’s life and the other the way she has backed the top BJP leaders in evading the Ayodhya case trial. On September 17 last year she rejected the CBI plea to issue a fresh notification for the creation of a special court to try the Babri Masjid demolition conspiracy case accused, including Deputy Prime Minister Advani, Uma Bharati, M M Joshi and others. “After seeking the legal opinion, my government is of the view that there is no need to issue any fresh notification,” declared Mayawati. Luck, as always, has been on her side. On November 29 the Supreme Court on Friday upheld Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati´s decision.

But ask the state leaders and they will tell you how much they hate her. An anarchy-like situation prevails in the state as power-cuts range from five to 12 hours a day, most carpeted roads appear as if they have faced cluster-bombing, administration has turned completely unresponsive to the people. Like Maywati’s diamonds, it is difficult to count the 166 million people’s woes. The Dalit queen’s only concerns are centered around creating dalit footprints every where be it renaming of the famed King George’s Medical College of Lucknow to Chatrapati Sahuji Maharaj Medical Institute or decorating the Ambedkar Smarak at the cost of Rs 150 crores. She continues to harp on the mysteries that have always surrounded her. She still prefers a house, which is more like a fortress, highly-protected to keep herself away from the prying public eyes. That is the reason why very few people have had the privilege to set their eyes on the pure gold statue of Bhim Rao Ambedkar, which graces her bedroom.