Thaindian News

Lucknow, Jan 15 (IANS) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati’s 54th birthday Friday was a clear deviation from the past, as she announced welfare programmes and development schemes worth a whopping Rs.7,312 crore.
Even as her dazzling diamonds were in place, the usual large cake from the only five star confectionery in town was missing and so was the ostentation at the function at her official residence.

Other than a brief specially composed birthday song-dance by children from the City Montessori School, there was no cultural extravaganza that used to mark the event on earlier occasions.

The focus was on 265 foundation stones and plaques that Mayawati unveiled with the click of a button.

These included inauguration of or foundation stone laying of new bridges, construction of new roads, installation of new ambitious power projects, drinking water and sanitation schemes besies programmes launched for the welfare of the poor, the infirm and women, the chief minister told invitees at a jam-packed multi-purpose hall in her residence premises.

“These welfare programmes, schemes and development projects were, in all, worth Rs.7,312 crores,” she said.

Most prominent of these is a monthly pension scheme that entitles the poor to get Rs. 300 a month. This would entail a financial burden of Rs.1,100 crores on the state.

“We brought this scheme to include the large chunk of the poor who could not be covered under the Below Poverty Line (BPL) list because of the ceiling imposed by the union government on the number of such beneficiaries,” she said.

“After the centre’s continued silence to our repeated requests for lifting the ceiling, we mobilized our own funds to increase the ambit of BPL beneficiaries. We propose to annually cover about 30 lakh poor people who despite living below the poverty line did not have BPL cards,” she said.

Her other populist announcements included release of 25 mentally handicapped prisoners and undertrials, besides proposed release of 26,335 undertrials who have completed 50 percent of the jail term to which they could be sentenced for their alleged crimes.

While she distributed a number of tri-cycles to the physically challenged, she also gave away cheques to some new BPL beneficiaries to mark the launch of her monthly dole scheme. The monthly subsistence pension of Rs.300 would be given away in six-monthly cycles.