Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 6 (IANS) Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) general secretary Satish Chandra Misra Tuesday denied a US diplomatic cable on whistleblower website WikiLeaks that he had called Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati corrupt.

The Rajya Sabha MP said he would sue the newspaper that had published the cable and serve a “legal notice to Wikileaks for making this baseless allegation against me when fact remains that I did not meet any foreign delegate between May 2007 and December 2007″.

“Well, Mayawatiji took oath as the chief minister on May 13, 2007, and the WikiLeaks cable is purported to have been sent barely two weeks after that… can you imagine anyone in my position making that kind of a statement within days of the formation of the government?” Misra asked.

“The whole story is concocted with the intent of tarnishing my image and forging a rift between me and the chief minister. But I can assure you that such a conspiracy will not work as Mayawatiji knows me well enough,” Misra told IANS.

According to the secret US embassy cable put out by WikiLeaks and published by a daily, the BSP leader and right hand man of Mayawati is said to have told embassy officials that the chief minister has a “strong authoritarian streak” and had a “penchant for corruption”.

The cable added that Mishra is “fluent in English and serves as the principal interlocutor between the US embassy and the BSP. He has graciously hosted embassy officers at his house”.

Interestingly, the WikiLeaks expose on Misra comes after a newspaper published another cable attributed to a conversation between state Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh and then US Charge d’Affairs Peter Burleigh.

The cable claimed that Mayawat’s cabinet secretary had ruled out any possibility of her becoming prime minister even in the event of formation of a third front government in 2009. Singh denied making the statement.

Mayawati responded to cables by saying at a press conference Tuesday: “Certain statements about me attributed by WikiLeaks to my two trusted men - Satish Chandra Misra and Shashank Shekhar Singh - were also evidently motivated with petty politics.

“As a befitting reply to all those who were behind this conspiracy, let me make it loud and clear that all this has only prompted me to give both of them greater importance in my scheme of things.”