Lucknow: A defiant Mayawati today justified the setting up of memorials worth crores of rupees in the city and charged the opposition and a section of the media with misleading people on the issue.

"The memorials are named after great men like Dr Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram who had worked for the uplift of dalits and deprived sections of society but they are for the benefit of all sections, including the upper castes.

The Opposition and media are distorting the facts to mislead people," Mayawati told reporters here.

Citing examples, she said that all her predecessors like the Congress, BJP and the Samajwadi Party had raised memorials after their ideologues and alleged that when she was doing the same a lot of hue and cry was being raised against her by the Opposition which was projecting as if all development had come to a halt in the state.

"I belong to the most backward caste and owe my success among others to these great men who showed the way to people like me and it is my moral duty to do something for them as they have been neglected by other political parties," she said.

"While the memorials being raised in Lucknow are named after Dr Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram the other state government programmes are merely named after these great men but they are for the benefit of all ... But if the objections are only after their names it says a lot about the casteist mentality of our political opponents," she said.
Source : PTI