Maya knows me well; didn't call her corrupt: Misra

Bahujan Samaj Party general secretary Satish Misra, who is regarded as the architect of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's much-hyped 'social engineering', on Tuesday flatly denied having called his party president corrupt.

Reacting to a story in the Indian Express, sourced to a WikiLeaks cable which claimed that he had told a US embassy political official that Mayawati was "corrupt", Misra told rediff.com: "I am going to sue the newspaper and also serve a legal notice to WikiLeaks for making this baseless allegation against me when fact remains that I did not meet any foreign delegate between May-December 2007."

He sought to point out, "Well, Mayawatiji took oath as the chief minister on May 13, 2007 and the Wikileaks cable is purportedly sent barely two weeks after that."

He added, "Can you imagine anyone in my position making that kind of a statement within days of the formation of the government ?"

Misra, whose clout in Mayawati's inner coterie had faded substantially over the years, feels, "The whole story is concocted with the intent of tarnishing my image and to forge a rift between me and the chief minister. But I can assure you that such a conspiracy will not work as Mayawatiji knows me well enough."

Interestingly, the WikiLeaks expose on Misra comes exactly 24 hours after the Indian Express published another WikiLeaks cable attributed to a conversation between  Mayawati's most trusted bureaucrat and UP's cabinet secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh and then US Charge d'Affairs Peter Burleigh.

The cable claimed that Singh had ruled out any possibility of her becoming prime minister in the event of the formation of a Third Front government in 2009. Singh flatly denied having made any such statement.

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