With eye to elections, BJP adopts tainted ministers ousted by Mayawati
Supporters of Mayawati Kumari, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) President and Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh state, wait during a political rally on April 6, 2009 in Palwal, India. Uttar Pradesh will hold state elections this February, and Mayawati has ousted tainted ministers and assembly members in preparation. Despite the anti-corruption fervor underway in the capital, the Bharatiya Janata Party — self-styled “the party with a difference” — has snapped them up.
The Indian Express hammers the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for adopting tainted politicians ousted by Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in advance of the upcoming Uttar Pradesh state elections.
A day after announcing it would never accept the “chors” [thieves] that Mayawati had discarded, the BJP welcomed to its fold Babu Singh Kushwaha, the former BSP family welfare minister on whose watch two chief medical officers were murdered, a deputy CMO died mysteriously in jail, and fraud worth thousands of crores was detected in the implementation of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in Uttar Pradesh.
The chief rival to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress Party — and self-styled "party with a difference" in a failed claim at cleanliness — the BJP has eliminated one more alternative for Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement. Hazare's people have already vowed to campaign against the Congress in Uttar Pradesh.
Still think corruption matters? Let's see the election results come March.