Terming Bahujan Samaj Party's maha rally in Lucknow on Monday as a "circus", Congress on Sunday called Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati a "ringmaster" controlling the event and even criticised her for not visiting the trouble-hit Bareilly district.
"The BSP rally is nothing more than
a circus where Mayawati is a ringmaster," UP Congress Committee president Rita Bahuguna Joshi told reporters in Lucknow.
She alleged that the rally was a 'vulgar exhibition' to conceal shifting base of the BSP, where government machinery was being misused and government fund being misutilised.
"Welfare of Dalits, poor, backward and minorities is not the motive behind organising the rally. It only intends to give electorates a message that the situation was still under control despite dwindling base of the BSP," Joshi said.
"It was unfortunate that while Bareilly was witnessing violence from the last two weeks, Mayawati instead of visiting the trouble-hit city was making lodging and fooding arrangements for the people coming for the rally," she said.
Joshi said the CM could not take out time to visit families of people killed in stampede at Kripaluji Maharaj ashram at Mangarh and express sympathies.
"Majority of the people killed in the stampede were either Dalits or most backward," she said.
The UPCC president said Mayawati, who was citing paucity of fund in distributing compensation to
stampede victims, was spending crores of rupees of decking up the rally ground.