Mayawati's mission, opposition's bane

Lucknow: Even by Mayawati's standards this was grand -- the unveiling of not one but 15 new statues featuring her and her guru, Kanshi Ram.

A lot of people want to know just who is paying for this? And that may be the reason why Mayawati speeded up the unveiling since the matter comes up in the Supreme Court on Monday.

"The Chief Minister is scared of meeting the people, she's afraid now that her government is facing problems. She wants to run a rogue government but now she knows her government is going to fall," said Mulayam Singh Yadav, president, Samajwadi Party.

"She has done this because there was a PIL that the Supreme Court was going to hear which was going to question. Where is the money coming from, which are the mines where these stones are being brought from, this is gross misuse of funds," said Digvijay Singh, General Secretary, Congress.

Mayawati's bitter rival Mulayam has threatened to bulldoze her new Dalit heritage in Lucknow and the Congress raising questions about the source of funds for the 15 monuments and statues that are part of that heritage.

Dalit heritage:

• 130 Elephant's worth Rs 52 crores
• Statues of Dalit icons worth Rs 192 crores
• And new memorials all costing the government Rs 780 crores this year
  

With work still in progress the fear of court action forced Mayawati to dump her plans of a grand finale and hurriedly inaugurated her new Dalit heritage before the scheduled day of July 3.

Mayawati may have for now succeeded in putting up the statues and memorials of Dalit icons but with her recent legal setbacks in Supreme Court in the Varun Gandhi case and the police recruitment scam her mission of glorifying Dalit icons and creating Dalit symbolism could come under an inquiry if not a court scrutiny, and the massive spending can become difficult to justify.