In a big boost to proponents of Telangana statehood, Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati backed a separate Telangana on Saturday saying that it was in tune with Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s philosophy of smaller states in the country.
“The Centre should accept the Telangana demand. The BSP will support the government if a bill is moved for carving out a separate Telangana in Parliament. I feel that a backward Telangana should be separated since it is a long-pending demand of the people,” she remarked.
She pointed out that the said region had fewer feudal and upper castes and more people from the weaker sections. “If the state is carved out, an SC will become chief minister. I was told that the Telangana people want a separate state but the Congress is not willing to give it,” she added.
While addressing the BSP state-level party workers in a closed-door meeting at a private function hall in L.B. Nagar here on Saturday, the UP chief minister also hinted at the BSP becoming an alternative to the Congress and BJP in the country and coming to power at the Centre and in states, including Andhra Pradesh, in the future through social transformation.
Mediapersons were briefly allowed to take pictures and were asked to leave the hall when she began addressing the packed gathering who gave her a rousing reception.
Ms Mayawati also alleged that parties like “Congress & Co” and “BJP & Co” had compromised on their electoral promises of 63 years of banishing poverty and empowering the SCs, STs, BCs, women, weaker sections and religious minorities and had instead gone along with big industrial houses.