Mayavati: Give and take

New Delhi, Oct. 18: Mayavati today agreed to return the Rae Bareli land where a railway coach factory is to come up, refusing to do a Mamata Banerjee and backing off from a possible showdown with Sonia Gandhi.

The Uttar Pradesh chief minister had cancelled the land allotment last week, a day before Sonia was to flag off construction of the factory in her constituency. The factory is expected to build 1,000 coaches a year and provide jobs for 10,000 people in a region where non-farming employment is scarce.

In a trade-off, Mayavati has asked the Centre for a Rs 5,000-crore grant to develop Rae Bareli and its neighbourhood, which includes Rahul Gandhi’s constituency Amethi, too. Such a grant would help the Bahujan Samaj Party chief claim in an election year that she was doing as much for the region as Sonia and Rahul.

A delighted M. Veerappa Moily, the Congress’s chief spokesperson, sounded tough when asked if the request would be accepted.

“Let the proposal come from the Uttar Pradesh government. We can reel off all that Congress governments have done for the state. Let her (Mayavati) specify the projects for which she requires the funds and surely the Centre will consider these on merit,” Moily said.

Explaining her turnaround, Mayavati said in Lucknow: “I don’t want to get in the way of development.”

As a face-saver, she added that the principal secretary would probe “farmers’ complaints” against the 189 hectares being taken away for the factory and submit a report, within three days of which the state cabinet would take a decision.

Uttar Pradesh government sources said the inquiry would be a formality to show that her official reason for cancelling the allotment was not “unfounded”.

Mayavati had claimed that local farmers were agitating against the acquisition of the land, which belongs to the gram sabha, but state officials had failed to explain who these farmers were.

The sources said Mayavati had done the about-turn mainly because she did not want to be seen as “anti-development” in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls. With the Left’s backing, she has upped her stakes to claim the Prime Minister’s post and will look to repeat the formula that had lifted her to power in her state: combining her Dalit vote bank with upper-caste support.

Before the 2007 Assembly polls, she had convinced the upper castes and the affluent that she was pro-industry and pro-business, and would rein in the “antisocial” forces that allegedly flourished under Samajwadi Party rule.

This new image, the sources said, took a beating once she blocked the Rae Bareli project. They added that unlike Mamata, who had used the veneer of a “mass” agitation by farmers to block the Nano project in Singur, Mayavati’s action smacked of administrative high-handedness.

The sources also said that though Mayavati had turned against the Congress and snuggled up to the Left, she was “too shrewd” to burn her bridges with the ruling party.

“She will be willing to do business with the Congress if this means big perks at the Centre,” a source said.

The history of the ownership of the Rae Bareli land, too, belied her explanation for cancelling the allotment. The plot originally belonged to the Union agriculture ministry. In February 2007, the railway ministry proposed to take it over. Mayavati, however, turned it into gram sabha land on May 30 this year.

Moily said: “Sonia Gandhi is not interested in the politics of vendetta, discrimination and hate. Mayavati had taken action which she has corrected. The Congress is committed to maintaining a harmonious federal polity.”