Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati is on a noble and praiseworthy mission. On Sunday, she said she had sacked from 500 BSP workers for their criminal links. How come they were there in the first place? Blame it on my rivals, she said. Now it transpires many of these sacked people did not even know they were BSP members, according to a report in the Mail Today. Must be a conspiracy of the rivals, what else.

Here is the text of the news report:

Mayawati ‘ expels’ criminals who were not in BSP
By Piyush Srivastava in Lucknow

UTTAR Pradesh chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party ( BSP) president Mayawati on Sunday announced her decision to expel 500 party workers for their involvement in criminal activities.

While her effort to cleanse politics of criminal elements was appreciated, what came as a surprise, though, was that a number of these people were either unknown or had no relationship with the BSP. Some like Billoo of Muzaffarnagar and Munna of Eta, who are among the 500 expelled by the BSP supremo, were virtually unknown in their own areas.

And then there are the likes of Vicky Tyagi and Rakshpal Singh alias Pappu Diwakar.

Tyagi, who is well known in Muzaffarnagar, is in jail in a murder case while Pappu is a bully from Eta.

But what both want to know is when did they join the BSP? “ I read in a local newspaper that I have been expelled from the BSP. But to the best of my knowledge, I was never a primary member of the BSP,” Pappu said.

“ I remember that during the 2007 assembly elections, Rajiv Gupta, husband of Pinki Gupta ( municipal chairperson of Ganjdundwara in Eta district) was campaigning for the BSP and had met me.

“ Unfortunately, his name is also there in the list of expelled leaders. I really enjoyed reading the newspaper because my name was there, even if for the wrong reason,” said Pappu with a loud guffaw.

That’s not all. There’s a classic case of a person from Sultanpur

who, too, found his name on the list of expelled BSP members.

He didn’t want to be identified as he feared that he might land in trouble for no reason at all.

“ I heard that Mayawati has removed me from her party. But my problem is that I am not a BSP member. I vote for the Congress and never met any BSP worker or leader.

“ I fear that she will now ask her men to establish that I was a BSP member who has been removed and then she will ask the police to book me,” he said.

The BSP supremo has so far expelled party members from many district — Eta, Muzaffarnagar, Sultanpur, Bareilly, Badaun, Bijnore, Gonda, Baghpat and Saharanpur.

From these, only the names of those removed from Muzaffarnagar and Eta are available.

It is believed that besides these nameless workers, some village chiefs and local municipal chairpersons too have been shown the door.

This has once again given the opposition parties enough arsenal to have a go at Mayawati.

Congress general secretary and the party in- charge of Uttar Pradesh, Digvijay Singh, has demanded that the BSP chief release the names of all those sacked, their positions in the party and their crimes.

“ We want to see the list. Unfortunately, the Right of Information Act doesn’t cover the political parties. Otherwise, we would have moved an application with the BSP,” he said in Meerut.

Akhilesh Yadav, Kannauj MP and state president of the Samajwadi Party ( SP) said, “ If there were 500 hardcore criminals in the BSP and she knew about it, then she should have tendered her resignation.” Yadav claimed that the entire episode was a farce.

“ I am sure Mayawati does not have any list and whatever she claims about expulsion is a farce. She is trying to cheat the masses. But she has exhausted all her tricks. She should resign instead of waiting for the 2012 assembly elections,” the SP MP and party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son said.

Ramapati Ram Tripathi, state president of the BJP also took a dig at the UP chief minister.

“ Mayawati herself is involved in several cases of financial embezzlement. She should punish herself first.

“ The gimmick of expulsion of workers is an eyewash. She is doing this to divert the people’s attention from her hardcore criminal ministers, MPs and MLAs,” Tripathi alleged.