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Mayawati Naina Kumari (Template:Lang-hi) (born 15 January 1956) is an Indian politician. She is the current Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state. It is the fourth time she holds this office, after three short tenures between 1995 and 2003. Her supporters refer to her as "Behen Ji", or sister.. At the age of 39, the unmarried Mayawati was the youngest politician to become the chief minister in Uttar Pradesh. She is the first Dalit women chief minister of any Indian state, Kumari Mayawati is an icon for millions of India's Dalits who still provide an important base for her after centuries of oppression by the Hindu upper castes.

Early life

Mayawati was born in Rampur into the scheduled caste Hindu Jatav or Chamar, community 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 bachelor's 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.

Political career

In 1982 Kanshi Ram founded the BSP as a party to represent the Buddhist and Dalits and Mayawati was the key member of this organization. BSP 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 BSP did not win, the electoral experience led to considerable groundwork over the next five years, (working with Mahsood Ahmed and other organizers). In 1989 election, party won 9% of the popular vote and 13 seats, 11 seats in 1991 election. 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 won for the first time in the Lok Sabha elections of 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. Before that in 2001 her mentor, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Kanshi Ram named her as his successor. 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.

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 colorful slogan: Haathi nahin, Ganesh hain, Brahma, Vishnu Mahesh Hain: The elephant (BSP Logo) is really the Lord Ganesha, the trinity of gods rolled into one.

Chief Minister, 2009

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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" ("Northern Province") into "Uttam Pradesh" ("Excellent Province"). Her initial 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 government. 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. As part of her social reform plans she advocates reservation for the poor am

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