Before preaching to Pakistan, look into your backyard: Mayawati tells PM Narendra Modi

Written by RAMENDRA SINGH

ATTACKING PRIME Minister Narendra Modi over the Centre’s “failure” to prevent terrorist attacks, BSP chief Mayawati Sunday said that the PM’s advice to the Pakistani government to focus on the welfare of its citizens is a good thing, but he should look into his own backyard to see whether his record is such that he can preach.

“Is it so that one who is eating jaggery is suggesting others to avoid it?” Mayawati asked, reacting to the PM’s first remarks on the Uri terror attack at BJP’s national executive meet in Kozhikode on Saturday.

Addressing mediapersons, the BSP chief said that the advice was an attempt at “emotional blackmail”, and an attempt to divert people’s attention from Modi’s failures before the upcoming elections in UP and other states.

Mayawati said people are “enraged” over the killing of 18 soldiers in Uri, and expect “concrete assurances” and “effective action” from the government to prevent any recurrences. She, however, added that people are only getting “despondency” from the actions of the PM, who did not assure them that the borders would now be secure, and terrorists would not infiltrate.

Mayawati claimed the government appears to be “misleading people” instead of making a long-term policy with consensus and implementing it. “It is surprising that the talk of war against poverty, unemployment and illiteracy in Pakistan is being made to divert people’s attention from its (government’s) failures to stop the loss of lives and property in the terrorist attacks from across the border,” she said.

The BSP chief added that the Modi government’s record on poverty, inflation, illiteracy and unemployment has also been “very bad”, and that BJP had faced defeat in Delhi, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu because it did not fulfill promises made during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

She claimed it is alarming that “this government will prove to be a failure like theCongress government” in securing the country’s borders and ensuring the well-being of soldiers, and that it will not be able to stop terrorist incidents along the borders.

Mayawati said Modi would suffer losses in the upcoming elections in various states because of his failures in public welfare and social security, so he has “cunningly tried to mislead people by linking India’s burning problems with Pakistan’s”. “It was not a big achievement but a political attempt to emotionally blackmail the people to affect the elections,” she added.

Targeting the ruling SP, Mayawati said people are suffering in “the internal rift and civil war of SP’s first family, caused by Mulayam Singh Yadav’s love for his son”. She added that law and order and developmental works are in a bad shape, while services in sectors such as health have come to a halt.

“The SP government seems to be playing fiddle like Nero while people are suffering from dengue and chikungunya… Governor Ram Naik and the Centre should direct the state government’s attention to its failures, so that people in distress can get some relief,” she said.