Waking up to the realisation that state assembly elections in the state are barely 18 months away, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has begun to sound an alert to her party rank and file.
Convening a meeting of her party legislators at her official residence in Lucknow on Wednesday, she told them in no uncertain terms to pull up their socks and get gear-up for the polls.
"In just about 18 months from now, UP will go to the polls; therefore it is now time that all of you get down to brass tacks and start fanning out in your respective constituencies to apprise the electorate of all the good work that this government has done over the past three and a half years," Mayawati told the gathering.
Urging the legislators to go door to door, she said, "It is important for people to be told how concerned we were about their well being for which we have not only introduced a number of welfare schemes, but also carried out a large number of development and anti-poverty schemes for the larger good of the state."
Lamenting over the alleged non-cooperation by the Centre, she further added, "What the electorate needs to also know is that whatever we have achieved was without the cooperation of the central government which has been repeatedly denying us our due."
She said, "After all UP is the most populous state in the country, therefore its financial requirements have to be higher than all other states; but the central government has never cared to understand this and have arbitrarily turned down our demand for higher financial assistance or special economic packages for the backward regions."
The chief minister also stressed upon the need to appraise the common masses of her government's "successful campaign against crime."
Mayawati's move is widely seen as an after-thought of the recently concluded Bihar state assembly elections, where her counterpart, Nitish Kumar clocked a landslide victory entirely on the plank of good governance.
