Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Monday lashed out at all members of Parliament who had raised hue and cry over her decision to initiate criminal proceedings against Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.
She had initiated the proceedings after accusing him of 'large scale bungling in the disbursement of the chief minister's discretionary fund' when he was at the helm of affairs in the state.
The Bahujan Samaj Party leader, who heads a coalition government with the Bharatiya Janata Party in UP, was speaking after the inducting two ministers in her 69-member Cabinet.
A Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court stayed Mulayam's arrest earlier in the day.
Referring to the protests in Parliament over her decision to pin down Mulayam and other prominent SP leaders, Mayawati said, "Let all those MPs who are trying to defend Mulayam know that I got FIRs lodged only after confirming prima facie charges against him.
"Still if some people are trying to find fault with my decision then all I can say is that they are slaves of the upper-caste 'manuvaadi' mentality. They cannot see the daughter of a dalit taking up cudgels with a powerful Yadav.
"Where were these MPs when the Kalyan Singh government got an FIR lodged against me in a case of float-pump purchase during my first stint as chief minister? This was done arbitrarily even though I had nothing to do with the fixation of rates for the item that was finalised during the President's rule by Governor Motilal Vora."
Interestingly, the ministers who were sworn in belonged to the Apna Dal, whose leader in the assembly, Atiq Ahmed, was not very long ago accused by Mayawati of hatching a conspiracy to kill her. While Ahmed is still in jail in connection with some other murder cases, the two new ministers, Ansar Ahmed and Surendra Singh Patel, have several criminal cases pending against them. Mayawati, however, claims to have 'reformed' them in the same manner as several others already enjoying berths in the Council of Ministers.
"He has promised to reform himself," was her spontaneous remark when she was asked about the patronage she had granted to dreaded mafia don and now TADA convict Mukhtar Ansari, after he pledged support to her government.