Maya completes 3 years as CM today

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UP chief minister Mayawati, who completes three years in office on Thursday, has strengthened her government’s position in the state legislature, expanded the base of her party and immortalised herself, along with other dalit icons, by building innumerable memorials and parks.

For Ms Mayawati, the completion of three years in office is indeed a matter for celebration since this is her longest tenure in office. In 1995, she lasted for four months; in 1997 her tenure extended up to six months and in 2002, she managed to complete 16 months in office.
The chief minister, who romped home with a slim majority of 206 MLAs in a House of 403 in May 2007, now has swelled the figure to 227 by merging single-member parties and getting Opposition MLAs to resign, re-contest and win byelections on BSP tickets.
While the government now enjoys a comfortable majority in both the Houses of the state legislature, the BSP has also moved from strength to strength by ensuring a sizeable presence of upper castes in the party. The BSP, after Brahmins, is now opting for Thakurs to enhance its vote base.
However, Ms Mayawati has spent a larger part of her present tenure in building parks and memorials dedicated to dalit icons, including herself. The parks and memorials have brought an onslaught of court cases and public interest litigation for the government and fierce criticism from political parties. From charges of high level corruption to allegations of diversion of funds, the Mayawati government has faced it all. With the chief minister focusing on parks and memorials, the law and order situation and basic governance has taken a beating.
It may be recalled that in her election campaign in 2007, Ms Mayawati had specifically promised an improvement on these two issues.
That the chief minister herself is not too satisfied with the prevailing state of affairs is evident from the fact that UP has seen three DGPs in three years and over two dozen changes in the chief minister’s own secretariat.
Despite assurances to the contrary, criminals continue to rule the roost and the chief minister’s much publicised drive to weed out criminals from the party has not had visible impact since criminals who members of Parliament or the state legislature, however, seem to enjoy immunity against such drives.
Though the chief minister has initiated a number of welfare schemes for “Sarvjan” — the new BSP mantra in UP — the poor implementation has prevented the benefits from reaching the target. The chief minister, on Thursday, is expected to announce some more schemes and showcase her achievements at a function to celebrate her three years in office.
With three years behind her and two years to go for the next Assembly elections, Ms Mayawati now faces her biggest challenge of her political career which is to retain her vote base and strike a balance between “Bahujan” and “Sarvjan”.