Sacked ministers in corruption row

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BJP president Nitin Gadkari (right) and party leader M. Venkaiah Naidu

In an unprecedented move, UP chief minister Mayawati on Sunday night dismissed four ministers from her Cabinet.
The dismissed ministers are Rakesh Dhar Tripathi (higher education), Rajpal Tyagi, (agricultural education), Avadesh Kumar Varma (backward class welfare) and Hari Om Upadhyay (home guard).
According to a statement issued by the chief minister’s secretariat, senior BSP minister Naseemuddin Siddiqui will hold additional charge of higher education, Inderjit Saroj will hold charge of backward caste social welfare ministry and Choudhury Laxmi Narain will hold additional charge of the agricultural education portfolio. The chief minister will hold the portfolio of home guard.
The removal of these four ministers immediately after the announcement of elections comes as a surprise. The four ministers who have been removed had been facing allegations of corruption and land grabbing since the past few months but the inquiries against them are still pending. Several other ministers, including Naseemuddin Siddiqui, are facing similar charges but no action has been initiated against them.
BSP sources, meanwhile, said that the four sacked ministers had been hobnobbing for tickets with other parties and were dropped before they could quit the BSP.
With the sacking of these four ministers, the total number of ministers sacked by chief minister Mayawati in the past four-and-a-half years is now 17.
The chief minister has dropped majority of the ministers who have faced grave charges of crime and corruption during their tenure in office.
“The chief minister will never tolerate corruption, crime and indiscipline and has always taken prompt action whenever these issues have come up before her. Her action is a part of her promise to provide a clean government. In fact, the Mayawati government is, perhaps, the only one to have sent its own MPs and ministers to jail if they have been found guilty of any offence,” said a senior officer in the CM secretariat.