Mayawati promises to carve Vidarbha out of Maharashtra

The party that ensured the Nationalist Congress Party-Congress combine got just one seat in the Lok Sabha elections from Vidarbha announced its intention of acting spoiler this time as well.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) put the issue of the separate state of Vidarbha on the political centre stage when it asked why neither the Democratic Front nor the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance had not thought it fit to create a separate Vidarbha.

"The Congress and the NCP are in power now and earlier it was the BJP-Sena combine. What prevented them to initiate steps for a separate Vidarbha state?" questioned  Mayawati.

Leaders like Chhagan Bhujbal (NCP) admitted that Mayawati's party, with no known resources and less presence, had won an average of 100,000 votes in every constituency in Vidarbha, leading to the decimation of the DF and a clean sweep by the BJP-Sena alliance that got 14 seats from the region.

Speaking to reporters on her arrival in Mumbai today, Mayawati reiterated her party's commitment that if voted to power then the BSP would grant statehood to Vidarbha and rename it Dr BR Ambedkar Vidarbha Rajya.

When her attention was drawn to NCP chief Sharad Pawar's view that the Vidarbha statehood issue be included in the joint manifesto of the Congress and the NCP, Mayawati said "it is the BSP's victory".

Asked about the Congress-NCP's claim that the BSP's move to field their rebel workers led to her party's impressive performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra, Mayawati said: "They are levelling baseless charges since they are losing ground because of the BSP. We never gave ticket to any rebel Congressman in the Lok Sabha polls".

To a query over the Sena-BJP asking the poll panel to advance polls in the state, she said "the decision taken by the Election Commission will be acceptable". The BSP chief, will be camping in Mumbai for three days to fine-tune the party's strategy for Assembly polls.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission today rejected the Sena-BJP combine's demand for changing the polling date for Assembly elections from October 13. "There were representations either to advance on postpone the polling dates. However, there was no unanimity among the political parties over it so they have decided to maintain October 13 as the polling date," Chief Election Commissioner TS Krishna Murthy said.

Earlier, a BJP-Sena delegation met the chief election commissioner and pleaded for shifting the date saying October 13, falling during "pitri paksh", was an inauspicious date.

When Murthy's attention was drawn to Sena supremo Bal Thackeray's comment that the poll panel should distinguish between religion and politics, he said: "We are not providing dictionary service. There is law and ample judgement of the court to clear the distinction."

Murthy said the poll panel had asked the DF government to defer tenders for transportation of food grains and computerisation of ration cards.