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Mayawati (Template:Lang-hi) (born January 15, 1956) is an Indian politician and the current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. She has been the Chief Minister during three other short tenures but her party holds the absolute majority in the state as of date. She is the highest income-tax payer among all politicians in India paying Rs. 26 crore for year 2007-08.. Coming from a dalit family, Mayawati made her way to the seat of chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the most populated state of India.

Early life

Mayawati was born in Ghaziabad to Ram Rati and Prabhu Das. Prabhu Das, her father worked as a clerk in the telecommunications department. She graduated from Kalindi College in Delhi and holds couple of bachelor degrees in Law and Education degrees. She worked as a teacher in Delhi (Inderpuri JJ Colony). In 1977, Kanshi Ram became very influential in her life resulting in her joining his core team when he founded the BSP in 1984. Shortly after, she changed her career path and entered politics full time. Mayawati married Gaurishankar Yadav in 1992, but left her husband and remarried in 1993. Her marriage with Raghvendra Pratap Singh failed and he left her. Later on, she had an affair with Rahul and she continued to stay with him in Sahadara.

Political career

In 1984, Kanshi Ram founded the BSP as a party to represent the Buddhist and Dalits, and Mayawati was one of the key people in the new organization. In 2001, Kanshi Ram named her as his successor.

BSP was formed in April 1984, and fielded Mayawati for its first election campaign from the Kairana Lok Sabha seat in the Muzaffarnagar district in 1984, and then again for the Lok Sabha seats of Bijnor in 1985 and Haridwar in 1989. Although they did not win, the electoral experience led to considerable groundwork over the next five years, (working with Mahsood Ahmed and other organizers), and in 1989, the party won 9% of the popular vote, and 13 seats in 1989, and 11 in 1991. Because the Dalits are widely-spread over the state, Kanshi Ram and Mayawati then adopted a policy of attracting other groups, which continues today.

Mayawati first won for the Lok Sabha elections in 1989 from Bijnor. In 1995, while a member of the Rajya Sabha, she became a Chief Minister in a short-lived coalition government, and validated her position by winning from two constituencies in 1996. She was again Chief Minister for a short period in 1997, and then for a somewhat longer term in coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party from 2002 to 2003.

In 2003, during one of her tenures as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati was accused of corruption by the opposition, Samajwadi Party. The Samajwadi Party legislators presented a video cassette and a CD to the Governor of Uttar Pradesh, which they claimed showed Mayawati asking her MLAs to hand over money from their annual constituency fund towards BSP's party fund. Shortly thereafter, Mayawati got more than 140 cases filed against her bete noire and head of Samajwadi Party, Mulayam Singh Yadav, for alleged misuse of the Chief Minister's Discretionary Fund when he headed the government in 1995-96. She also got first information reports (FIRs) registered against other leaders of the Samajwadi Party.

In her tenures as Chief Minister, Mayawati has erected a number of monuments to Buddhist and Dalit heroes like Bhimrao Ambedkar and others also of Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj, Gautam Buddha.

2007 U.P. Assembly Elections

Contrary to some poll predictions, BSP won a majority, the first such majority since 1991. Mayawati managed to attract support from Brahmins, Thakurs, Muslims and OBCs voted for the first time for a Dalit party, partly because BSP had offered seats to people from these communities. As usual, this was accompanied by a colourful slogan: Haathi nahin, Ganesh hain, Brahma, Vishnu Mahesh Hain: The elephant (BSP Logo) is really the wise Ganesh, the trinity of gods rolled into one.

Chief Minister, 2007

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Mayawati was sworn in as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh for the fourth time on 13 May 2007. She announced an agenda that focused on providing social justice to the weaker sections and providing employment instead of distributing money to the unemployed. Her slogan is to make "Uttar Pradesh" ("Northen Province") into "Uttam Pradesh" ("Excellent Province").

Her first action was to suspend two IAS officers for non-performance alleging that they had failed to maintain the Ambedkar park in Lucknow: B.B. Singh, Vice-President (LDA), and S.K. Aggarwal (PWD Principal Sec.) and another lower rank officer. It is widely believed that these officers were close to the outgoing government of Mulayam Singh Yadav. She has transferred around 100 police officers.

According to her, she is continuing the process of clearing out corruption in the UP Police Department, whereas other parties claim that she is nurturing corruption by creating a team of government officials who operate under her personal control. The campaign is a major crackdown on corrupt police officers recruited during the previous Mulayam Singh Regime. So far 17,868 policemen have lost their jobs for irregularities in the recruitment process and 25 IPS officers were suspended for their involvement in corruption while recruiting the police constables.

She has also opened case files related to land deals of the leading actor Amitabh Bachchan in Barabanki, who is close to the previous Samajwadi Party regime.

Keeping an eye on the votes of upper castes, she now talks about a policy for poverty-based reservations rather than caste-based reservations.

2009 parliamentary elections

Mayawati's BSP did not match expectations in the 2009 general elections. The BSP, which was expected to win more than 35 seats in Lok Sabha from the state of Uttar Pradesh, succeeded in bagging only 20 seats. The BSP obtained the highest percentage (27.42%) of votes in UP for any one political party. It was in third position in terms of national polling percentage (6.17%)..

See also

• Bahujan Samaj Party

References

1. UP CMs & their terms. Retrieved on March 30, 2007.
2. Mayawati, Shah Rukh among top taxpayers
3. "Mayawati in Newsweek's top woman achievers' list".
4. "Mayawati is India's anti-Obama: Newsweek".
5. "Profile of Mayawati, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh". Official UP Government Release. Retrieved 2007-05-13.
6. "Samajwadi Party claims to have on tape Mayawati demanding a 'cut'". Rediff.com. 2003-03-04. Retrieved 2007-03-30.
7. Mayavati is increasingly being seen as a threat to the traditional vote banks of the Congress particularly Dalits.She has emerged as the leader of the Third front in Indian Politics. Rajiv Ranjan Jha (25 May 2005). "Mayawati adds another 100 feet to her stature". Times of India. Retrieved 2007-05-13. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. "Politics of vendetta".
9. Maya cracks whip IBNlive.com
10. "Uttar Pradesh police recruitment scam". News Track India. 2007-10-01. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
11. Mayawati promises justice for all
12. http://eci.nic.in/results/frmPercentVotesPartyWiseChart.aspx

External links

• Official biodata
• Bahujan Samaj Party
• "Untouchable" seeks power in Indian election

Timeline

Template:Persondata Template:Dalit

• Misplaced Pages articles needing copy edit from January 2009
• 14th Lok Sabha members
• 1956 births
• Bahujan Samaj Party
• Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh
• Indian women in politics
• Living people
• People from Bijnor