On the occasion of 2nd anniversary of Demonetisation, Mayawati lashed out on government and demanded an unconditional apology. Mayawati, the four-time Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and Supremo of Bahujan Samaj Party created history in 1995. She became the first chief minister who hailed from the scheduled caste. She has been hailed as a hero of the lower caste community. Mayawati’s political career has attracted praises and controversies both. She has been praised for her fundraising efforts on behalf of her party while her birthdays were major media events being symbolic for her supporters. This increased her personal wealth and the party wealth also multiplied over the time. She has been alleged for corruption during her tenure as incidents like construction of elephant statutes took place in her tenure only.
Mayawati lost legislative assembly elections in 2012 to the Samajwadi party. In 2014, PM Modi took away Mayawati’s dream of becoming first Dalit Prime Minister. Later in 2015, ousted leader of BSP Daddu Prasad alleged that Mayawati sold tickets for money. She was wiped out completely in Lok Sabha elections in 2014 with no representative from her party getting elected in the parliament. This defeat in 2014 broke her party internally and waves of dissent and truth started coming out about corruption and her fouled decisions. In 2015 again, senior BSP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Jugul Kishore accused her of allotting tickets for money. Dara Singh Chauhan, Akhilesh Das, Ramashankar Rajbhar rebelled against the party as she preferred leaders who had money power.
Bahujan Samaj Party which is touted as a platform for social change in order to improve the lives of the weakest strata of the Indian society seems to have done nothing of that sort. Mayawati has constantly been accused of malpractices in fundraising and supporting muscle power in the politics at the expense of the political mandate she enjoyed.
Bhartiya Janta Party in a drive to uproot the corruption in the Indian politics announced Demonetization in November 2016. This move was a big blow to the muscle-power in politics which was primarily run with the support of ill-gotten money. Demonetization was executed just before the UP election with an aim to free the elections of money and muscle power. BJP won the mandate with huge margin and Mayawati lost her ground completely. From then, she has accused the BJP and the central government of plotting a conspiracy against her. Enforcement Directorate has found that INR 104 crores were deposited in BSP account just after the demonetization drive. 102 crores of cash were deposited in 1000 rupees note while rest was in 500 rupees denominations.
Again, in the 2017 legislative assembly elections, Mayawati was wiped out from the political scenario by BJP. It was concluded that because of the central government’s demonetization drive, Mayawati couldn’t win and BJP almost freed Uttar Pradesh from her style of politics. Since then, it seems that Mayawati has some personal grudges against the BJP government. Government agenda of cashless India has been achieved successfully. Indian people deserve a better political leader who takes them forward rather than using them for personal gains. Demonetisation drive has promised India, a cash-free politics and rooted-out the real “Thug of Hindostan”. It is clear that Mayawati has a personal agenda against the government rather than having a constructive people oriented approach.