Her love of setting up parks and statues saw Lucknow jail being razed to the ground, and drew flak from Congress which said the utilisation of Central funds were 'wasted'.
Rahul Gandhi scripted Congress' resurgence in Uttar Pradesh where chief minister Mayawati's penchant for raising parks and statues landed her in a spot in 2009. It also saw her ambitions to move to the centrestage of national politics take a knock with Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) faring poorly in the Lok Sabha polls.
With ambitions fuelled by new-found Marxist friends, Mayawati made a serious bid to match her party's impressive 2007 assembly poll showing in the general elections, but her applecart was upset by the steady march of Congress under the Gandhi scion, who talked of development to guide the party to its 21-seat haul in the country's most populous state.
Rahul's plans for development of Bundelkhand received the Centre's nod, which announced a special package of Rs7,266 crore for development of the drought-hit region that spans across Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.
Following the Centre's decision to create a separate Telangana state, Mayawati favoured carving out of Bundelkhand, Paschimanchal and Poorvanchal from Uttar Pradesh. Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD)'s Ajit Singh also renewed his agitation for creation of a 'Harit Pradesh' in western Uttar Pradesh.
Samajwadi Party (SP) general secretary Amar Singh continued to be in the news when a money laundering case was registered against him. An Uttar Pradesh lawyer accused Singh of siphoning off black money in the name of several companies in which, besides him, his wife Pankaj Kumari Singh and megastar Amitabh Bachchan allegedly had cross-holdings.
On the political front, while an average showing at the hustings saw Mayawati's prime ministerial ambition take a beating, the Samajwadi Party which has dreams of a major role at the Centre post Lok Sabha polls, was faced with one of the toughest challenges to its existence, with rebellion brewing within, and its most trusted Muslim votebank shifting.
SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav saw his long standing friends like Azam Khan, Shafiqur Rehman Burq and Shahid Siddiqui deserting him on issues like Indo-US nuclear deal and his growing proximity with Kalyan Singh.
Though his party accomplished the onerous task of holding on to its top position in the state by managing to win the maximum 23 Lok Sabha seats, it was far less than its previous tally of 35 out of a total of 80 seats.
Congress' resurgence illustrated the growing importance of national parties in the state, but BJP failed to capitalise on the opportunity in the absence of a charismatic leader like Atal Bihari Vajpayee or a popular issue.
Veteran Hindutva leader and face of the Ram temple movement, Kalyan Singh, found himself shuffling between BJP and SP to being unceremoniously dumped in the cold with not even his parent party expressing any desire to take him back.
The major part of the year had Mayawati hogging the headlines for her penchant for installing statues and erecting parks in the name of Dalit icons which forced the supreme court to pass strictures on continued works in Ambedkar Udyan in Lucknow in defiance of court orders.
Her love of setting up parks and statues saw the historical Lucknow jail being razed to the ground, and drew flak from opposition Congress which said the utilisation of Central funds "wasted" on these constructions.
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