Rahul Gandhi’s constituency Amethi is once again caught in political crossfire between the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
On Wednesday, while the Congress leader on a three-day tour of Amethi assured two sisters, allegedly hounded by BSP-supported land-grabbers, of all support, the Mayawati government won a legal battle over Amethi.
It got an all-clear from the apex court to its decision to rename the Nehru-Gandhi family’s VIP borough after BSP icon Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj. Shahuji was a 19th century ruler of Kolhapur known as a pioneer in granting reservations to the deprived in employment.
Onlookers at Sarwan village in Amethi were stunned as the two sisters from Lucknow, Shivani and Sonia Chauhan, browbeat the special protection group (SPG) security ring to bring Rahul’s motorcade to a halt. The women, wailing in grief, narrated their story to a patient Rahul who played the good samaritan, assuring them justice.
The sisters’ tale of woes took on political connotations as Shivani Chauhan alleged that BSP-backed goons were helping her family members, including her brother, to grab her parental property. “I have been framed in false cases and sent to jail twice,” she screamed before TV cameras after Rahul’s cavalcade left.
“If they want to kill me, let them do it once and for all instead of harassing us with false criminal cases, threats and attacks,” she howled.
Shivani and her sister told reporters that they had also met Priyanka and Sonia Gandhi on separate occasions last year, after which the case had been handed over to CB-CID and they finally got a clean chit. “But even now the police are siding with the land-grabbers… on August 15, I was beaten up… I suffered head injuries but the police did nothing,” Shivani said. “I even met Behnji (Mayawati) but she spurned me saying ‘you are from the opposite party’,” she added.
Even as the sisters hurled the allegations, Mayawati virtually squared the score with Rahul as the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the state government’s decision to rename and reorganise Amethi as part of a new district called Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Nagar. The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court had recently struck down the Mayawati government’s decision to that effect, saying the reorganisation could not be done as the census was in progress.
Sources say the SC decision was conveyed to Mayawati while she was addressing a meeting of top BSP leaders in Lucknow. The BSP leader, the sources shared, could barely suppress her joy and told party leaders that justice had finally been done. She reportedly touted it as a major moral victory in BSP’s political battle against the Congress.
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