IT SEEMS Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) national president Mayawati doesn’t want to give the opposition parties in UP any space and chance to attack her government on the charges of corruption and poor governance. She is leaving no stone unturned in order to ensure that her party wins the upcoming elections in the state with big margin and to brighten that prospects she is busy in the cleaning-up operations of her party in which she is continuously sacking her tainted ministers.

On Wednesday, the BSP leader took serious view of the observations and charges that were made by the Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta, Justice (retd) N K Mehrotra, about her two close ministers i.e. Rangnath Mishra and Badshah Singh who were the minister for secondary education and labour respectively. After taking the charges of corruption seriously, Mayawati sacked these two ministers and handed over the probe against the ministers to the state vigilance department.

The lokayukta has been looking into the allegations and has been probing into the charges of land grabbing in Mahoba, the area is near Banda district in the Bundelkhand region, by labour minister Badshah Singh who has been accused of involved in other unethical practices too.

The other minister Rangnath Mishra who was looking after the secondary education, has been charged with amassing illegal wealth. He has made assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. Bahujan Samaj Party state president Swami Prasad Maurya has said the party would not give these ministers any responsibility and post till they were proven not guilty.   

However, the leaders of opposition parties in the state have dubbed the action as ‘too little, too late.’ The Congress spokesperson Subodh Srivastava said the action will not going to help the BSP in the upcoming elections. Everyone knows the party is totally drowned in the mire of corruption. The state government has done nothing for the betterment of the people living in state who voted them to power. The government did not sack ministers on its own but the action came after the government was forced to take some action following the report of Lokayukta.

BJP state president Surya Pratap Shahi has also expressed his displeasure on the action which he said has came at a point when the elections are just round the corner. He said it was hard to believe that Mayawati had no knowledge of her ministers’ wrong-doings that were on for the last four-and-a-half years. Shahi said in order to really cleanse her government Mayawati must declare her and her cabinet colleagues income and assets if her government was really serious to tackle and check corruption.

Janta Dal United (JD-U) state president Suresh Niranjan ‘Bhaiyyaji’ has also said sacking of ministers just before the elections in order to show the people of state that the government was serious on the issue of corruption, cannot give any advantage to the BSP in elections as the public knows all and now when they all stand exposed on the issue of corruption, they wanted to befool the electorate by these types of actions.