BackMayawati to hold rallies in Agra and Azamgarh next month
The move will also serve to launch Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati's campaign for the 2017 assembly election in Uttar Pradesh
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New Delhi: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati on Sunday said she will hold rallies at Agra and Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh next month to highlight recent atrocities against Dalits.
The move will also serve to launch her campaign for the 2017 assembly elections in the state.
“We have decided to call off the protest planned on 25 July and work on organising two rallies, one on 21 August in Agra and second on 28 August in Azamgarh, to tell the people of UP about the anti-Dalit mentality of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)," Mayawati told reporters in Lucknow.
The 25 July event had been planned to protest against the use of derogatory language against Mayawati on Wednesday by former BJP state vice-president Dayashankar Singh. It would have been the second such protest by the BSP supporters after one held on Thursday near the statue of B.R. Ambedkar in Lucknow’s Hazratganj.
Mayawati alleged the BJP leader used such language to divert the public’s attention from the recent act of violence against Dalits on 11 July in Una in Gujarat.
Attacking the prime minister and his government for what she called their anti-Dalit attitude, she said, “PM Narendra Modi has still not spoken anything about the Gujarat Dalit assault, which shows that BJP is not with the Dalit community. Thus, all the pro-Dalit schemes launched by the Modi government in the past one year, are nothing but election gimmicks to woo the 25% Dalits in Uttar Pradesh before the state goes to polls."
Mayawati said Dalits across the country have only come out stronger after the Una incident. “I opposed the Una incident in Parliament and outside, which united Dalits across the nation. After all this violence, Dalits have come forward fearlessly and are confronting the government. This is what the BJP is fearing now," she said.
Modi on Friday sought to defuse the controversy triggered by remarks made against Mayawati by declaring at a public meeting in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, that caste and dynasty based politics will not lead to development of the state.
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