Bengaluru: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Saturday said efforts should be made to stop both the ruling Congress and the BJP from coming to power in Karnataka for ignoring the poor.
Addressing a massive rally of Janata Dal (Secular) at Yelahanka near Bengaluru, Mayawati appealed to voters to teach a lesson to these political parties for neglecting poor, SCs, STs, farmers and small traders.
“In Karnataka, Dalits, Adivasis, backward classes, and minorities, who were attracted by the Congress on fake promises have not benefited,” Mayawati said.
She said that Congress would try to attract Dalit votes by making false promises. “In the last election, it promised a Dalit Chief Minister but it did not honour its commitment. The BJP played caste politics and touched religious sentiments. Do not fall prey to the promises made in the manifestos of these parties,” she cautioned.
Particularly targeting the Congress for its policies towards Dalits, she said: “The party did not respect B.R. Ambedkar. It used all its resources to prevent him from entering Parliament and even misused official machinery for this. V.P. Singh’s government honoured Dr. Ambedkar with the Bharat Ratna and implemented the report after we sought it.”
The BJP government, she said, was also functioning on the same lines, and that farmers and traders had become economically weak. “Minorities were not feeling safe in India as the BJP was implementing Hindutva-RSS agenda at the Centre,” she said. Citing that demonetisation and GST were implemented without preparation, she said: “It has been four years since the BJP promised to bring back black money and give it to the poor. But, nobody had received a penny yet.”
In an emotionally charged address, JD(S) State president H.D. Kumaraswamy, who was declared as the alliance’s chief ministerial candidate by Mayawati, said: “I am not seeking power for my sake. Bring JD(S) to power for your own welfare.”
