Lucknow, May 13: Buoyed by her success in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Mayawati on Sunday said "the road to Centre is now clear", an indication that she would set her eyes on the prime ministership in times to come.
Addressing a press conference immediately after taking oath as Chief Minister, Mayawati
Said, "This is what our party workers have been wanting. UP being the most populous state of the country ... when we have won in UP with absolute majority I think the way to the Centre is clear."
"If we continue to get success in other states, it is obvious that our party will go to the Centre as well," she replied when asked whether her party would "make it to the Centre" in the wake of its success in UP.
"We have already started working in the south and we have an MLA in Andhra Pradesh. Our organisation is marching forward in every state," she said.
At the outset, Mayawati said her party's success in the elections was a vindication that the people of the state have accepted the BSP ideology. In this context she recalled the Dalit icons Jyotiba Phule, Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, Sree Narayana Guru, Periyar and B R Ambedkar.
The BSP government will not allow communal violence and withdraw police security for controversial personalities, Mayawati said, and added that those who did not get justice during the earlier Samajwadi Party regime would be rendered justice.
"Such cases will be re-investigated and if anybody is found guilty he will not be spared," she said.
"Among my top priorities are maintenance of law and order and provision of a crime free, fear free, corruption free and development governance," Mayawati said.
She also ordered a probe into all the decisions taken by the Mulayam Singh Yadav government taken after the announcement of assembly elections.
The life and property of people belonging to all religions will be protected and nobody will be allowed to indulge in violence in the name of religion, the new Chief Minister said.
Mayawati also announced scrapping of the UP Development Council set up by the previous government and said she would soon come out with a new development policy for the state.
She said her government will support any initiative for reservation based on economic criteria.
'Destruction of files to be probed’
Mayawati said incidents of destruction of official files
at the offices of some former Samajwadi Party ministers on
the day of counting of votes would be inquired into.
"All such incidents will be investigated", Mayawati told
reporters in reply to a question here.
The office of former UP Urban Development Minister Azam
Khan was sealed by the police following reports that loads of
official documents were destroyed there on the day of counting
of votes as reports of the SP drubbing poured in.
Mayawati had directed the DGP to look into the matter.
Bureau Report