Mayawati slams UPA over direct cash transfer scheme

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati today slammed the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) for the direct cash transfer scheme.

She said the scheme had been launched with a view to luring voters ahead of the 2014 general election.

Mayawati noted per se there was nothing new in the scheme as it only substitutes the central subsidy given to the poor through the respective state governments.

“Now the subsidy portion in the central schemes would reach the poor directly bypassing the state government. This is purely aimed at garnering votes for the Congress in run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha poll,” said told the media here.

She stressed that the direct cash transfer scheme already existed in some or the other forms and the fresh launch was like a “new cover to an old book.”

Congress is just trying to shortchange the poor people of the country in the name of cash transfer, Mayawati underlined.

She maintained that UPA had been giving attention to non-importance issues and was being partisan to the people of UP, for which she also blamed the state government for failing to fetch the central largesse.

UPA also came under fire for inflation, FDI in retail, hiking domestic cooking gas prices and capping subsidised cylinders.

Meanwhile, Mayawati flayed chief minister Akhilesh Yadav for the alleged failure of the law and order machinery in the state. The crime situation has acquired such proportions under the Samajwadi Party rule that people are now calling UP as ‘Crime Pradesh’, she observed.

The Rajya Sabha member claimed over 100 communal riots had taken place during the last 10 months of Akhilesh rule and FIRs were not being lodged in 60 per cent of the cases causing harassment to the victims.

“Almost 1,500 cases of rapes and serious crimes against women have occurred under the SP rule,” she said.