Why Haryana govt not dismissed? asks Mayawati

Lucknow : BSP chief Mayawati today asked why the Haryana government has not been dismissed after violence by Dera followers, taking a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his remarks that violence in the name of faith would not be tolerated and the guilty would be punished.

“Had there been any honesty and truth in what the prime minister stated in his ‘Mann ki Baat’ yesterday, the Manohar Lal Khattar government would have been dismissed by now after the stern view taken by the Punjab and Haryana High Court,” Mayawati said in a statement here.

“…this proves that the BJP top leadership believes only in preaching and doing nothing in reality,” she said. In his monthly radio address, the prime minister also reminded the people what he had in his Independence Day speech said that there was no place of violence in the name of faith in a democratic country like India, but the latest incident in Haryana proved that his party’s government there had failed in the very first test it faced, the BSP chief said.

“But the (BJP) party leadership is not ready to take note of it,” she said. “Actually, the BJP leadership will have to give up its arrogance that they are above the country, law and the Constitution and only what they think is patriotism,” she said, adding that the country has faced problems because of such narrow-minded thinking.

Mayawati also asked if the BJP would tender an apology for violence and demolition carried out under the government protection on the death anniversary of B R Ambedkar on December 6, 1992. She said that the prime minister’s statement once again proved the vast difference between what the BJP says and what it does in reference to violence under government protection in Haryana just like in Gujarat in 2002.

A day after a CBI special court convicted Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in a rape case, the BSP supremo had demanded immediate dismissal of the Khattar government over the violence in Haryana, saying such “shameful surrender” to vote bank politics needed to be condemned. She had expressed deep anguish over the loss of lives in the state after his frenzied followers went on the rampage within a few hours of the pronouncement of the judgement by a CBI court in the 2002 case.

“The Khattar government should be immediately dismissed for its absolute laxity and involvement leading to large-scale violence after the conviction of the Dera Sacha Sauda chief on rape charges,” Mayawati had said on Saturday. She alleged that the vote bank politics of the BJP and the criminal negligence of the Khattar government was responsible for the loss of lives. “This kind of shameful surrender for politics of vote needed to be condemned by all,” she said.

The BSP chief alleged that the state government failed to follow the strict orders of the court in ensuring rule of law and it needed to be dismissed immediately but the Modi government and the top BJP leadership continued to be lax.