Apart from customary greetings, the only gift Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati will accept from party workers on her 56th birthday on Sunday are ‘model code of conduct’ CDs.
Every year, for the last four years, January 15 is celebrated with much pomp by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) workers. This time, however, the Election Commission (EC) diktat has put a spoke in the plan.
Top party leaders tried in vain to talk anxious country cousins out of all celebration, reminding them that the EC would be monitoring all expenditures. But when cadres refused to be assuaged, the think-tank came up with the ‘CD plan’.
Celebrate the boss’s birthday at home, invite people, make merry, and then make a CD and send it to her as testimony of your loyalty, was the verbal message sent to BSP workers across the state.
Not everyone, however, is convinced this is a good idea. “I am feeling helpless,” said Subodh Yadav, the BSP candidate from Siddharthnagar district.
Usually, Mayawati cuts a cake, IAS and IPS officers queue up outside her Lucknow residence, newspapers and local TV channels are agog with birthday greetings from party workers in the form of advertisements and fund-raising drives are conducted by BSP leaders. But this year, all that has been planned is a “small” celebration at the BSP’s state unit office, where the CM is likely to announce her campaign programme.