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ShareLucknow: Mayawati's justification for installing her own statues is simple -- her mentor and BSP founder Kanshi Ram told her to do so. Why is she installing the statues of other "great leaders"? Because other parties who formed governments at the Centre and in UP in the past did not do so.
"It was Kanshi Ram's wish that my statue should always be installed wherever a statue of 'Manyawar' is put up. I am only honouring his wish," Mayawati has often said publicly.
A BSP old-timer said: "Mayawati is putting up bronze statues because she thinks that a couple of hundred years from now, people will worship her as a deity." The solid metal statues are protected with elaborate canopies for this reason, he said. Mayawati has often described herself as "zinda devi" (living goddess) at BSP rallies.
On Thursday, when Mayawati hastily inaugurated her 15 "dream projects", she said that she had been compelled to build so many parks and memorials because no other government in the past had bestowed appropriate honours on these "great leaders".
She also asked sarcastically: "Why doesn't anyone raise a finger at the memorials at Rajghat where the land itself would be worth crores of rupees?" This was a direct attack on the Congress since Mahatma Gandhi was cremated here and memorials dedicated to Nehru, Indira and Rajiv Gandhi are situated nearby.
As much as 5.5 lakh metric tonnes of pink stone from Jaipur and Chunar (in east UP) is estimated to have gone into realising Mayawati's dreams of honouring the Dalit pantheon, including herself.
The statues are being made at two workshops, one at Noida and the other near Lucknow.
Opposition leaders have flayed Mayawati for helping raise air pollution to hazardous levels in Lucknow apart from squandering hundreds of crores of rupees of public money on her "dream projects".
"Instead of spending crores in the memory of the dead, Mayawati should do something for those who are alive," says Vivek Singh, chairman of the UP Congress media department. "Thousands of Dalit families could have benefited from the money. We wouldn't mind even if Mayawati builds schools and hospitals exclusively for Dalits. But this is madness," he said.
But Mayawati has an answer to that, too. "We have not curtailed the budgets for education, roads or health to provide for these memorials," she said at Thursday's inauguration ceremony.
"If my party comes to power, we will bulldoze these statues", was Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav's response to the inauguration.
"There is no governance. Incidents of atrocities against Dalits are at their highest levels. But Mayawati is busy installing her statues and inaugurating memorials," said HN Dixit, the BJP spokesperson in the state.
With the Supreme Court giving her government four weeks to respond to a PIL against the spending binge, the Dalit icon has got some more time to spruce up the parks, memorials and statues so dear to her.
