As if Rs 6,000 crores already spent was not enough, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Friday told the state assembly that all the memorials and statues erected by her in Lucknow and in Noida would not put any further drain on the state exchequer.
She was replying to the motion of thanks on the Governor's address. "I would like to clarify that we have not made any further allocations towards the memorials with effect from the next financial year," Mayawati told the house.
Contrary to clear cut allocation of about Rs 6,000 crores in the past budgets, Mayawati claimed, "Only 1 per cent of the state's annual budget was allocated towards the memorials," without specifying that UP's budget was of the order of about Rs 120,000 crores.
Strangely, this was at variance with the state government's own admission before the country's apex court about Rs 2,600 crores being spent on these memorials, even as budgetary provisions show total allocations of nearly Rs 6,000 crores through the years.
Justifying the expenditure, she said, "This would not have been required if the past governments had cared to show some respect towards different dalit icons in whose memory nothing was ever built."
She sought to point out, "On the other hand, successive governments both at the Centre and in the state -- only concentrated on building memorials in the name of their own leaders," while adding, 'the upkeep and security of these monuments have been costing the state exchequer a fortune, about which no body talks.'
Simultaneously, she also blamed the Centre for turning down her repeated demand for a special grant of Rs 80,000 crores for the desired development of the state's backward regions of Bundelkhand and Purvanchal. "The Central government has not paid any heed to my repeated requests for a special economic package of Rs 80,000 crores for Bundelkhand and Purvanchal," she said.
Giving out a long list of development works undertaken across the state, she flayed the opposition for painting a false picture about her government's working.
"The extent of work that my government has done for the larger good of the state and its people cannot be matched by any past government," the chief minister claimed.
