BSP supremo Mayawati has again played the caste-card to defend her brother after the Income Tax department attached a ‘benami’ plot worth Rs 400 crores belonging to the brother of BSP supremo Mayawati Anand Kumar and his wife Vichiter Lata.
Mayawati alleged that BJP and its ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) didn’t want ‘people from the backward castes to do better.’ “The BJP cannot tolerate when people of the deprived sections progress, especially in business, and use power and government machinery against them,” she said.
Tightening its noose around benami properties, the IT department had on July 18 seized a ‘benami’ plot worth Rs 400 crores. The plot is reportedly seven-acres in size and is located in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida. It was “beneficially owned” by Mayawati’s brother Anand Kumar and his wife Vichiter Lata.
According to the provisional order, attachment of the land was issued on July 16 by Delhi-based Benami Prohibition Unit of the Income Tax department. The order was issued under section 24(3) of the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988. It stated that the benami property owned by the couple measured 28,328.07 square meters or about 7 acres.
Mayawati, with an evident intention to defend her brother said the BJP’s “attempt to crush the voice of the deprived people” would not succeed.
“There is no doubt that at present BJP and RSS are the most casteist organisations in the country. They don’t want to see Dalits, tribals and people from the backward class to do better. They are trying various tactics but our party will fight for social, political and financial democracy across the country,” she added.
Interestingly, Mayawati calls BJP and RSS the “casteist organisations”, but ironically it is she, the self-proclaimed custodian of the backward class, who has this special fondness of alluding to such casteist remarks time and again. During the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls on May 10, she had raised a similar issue against PM Narendra Modi alleging that the Prime Minister isn’t an OBC by birth and that he hasn’t suffered from casteism. Then again a month later Mayawati raised apprehensions about PM Modi’s caste origins, saying that he belongs to a fake backward community.
