Lucknow, May 28 (IANS) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati Friday dared leaders of all other political parties to declare the assets held by them before and after joining politics.
Her challenge came following widespread criticism from different political quarters about her own wealth, of the order of Rs.88 crore, as mentioned in the declaration filed by her with her nomination papers for the state legislative council.
Addressing a press conference, the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) general secretary Satish Chandra Misra said Mayawati ‘was the only politician in the country who believed in complete transparency about her sources of income as well as her moveable and immoveable assets’.
‘She has thrown an open challenge to leaders of all other political parties to not only give a detailed account of the assets held by them before they stepped into public life as also now, but to also declare the sources of their income over the years,’ he said.
On the criticism by various political leaders, he remarked ‘those who live in glass houses, should not throw stones’.
Misra claimed that politicians were ‘invariably in a habit of concealing their actual wealth because they would not be able to disclose the source of their real assets’.
Attacking Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, the BSP leader alleged that when Yadav ‘entered politics, he simply owned a bicycle and a few bighas of land, whereas today he holds huge assets worth billions of rupees under his own name as well as that of his close kin’.
Expressing concern over India’s ‘black money stacked in foreign banks’, Misra said Mayawati had questioned the silence of successive NDA (National Democratic Alliance) and UPA (United Progressive Alliance) governments on the issue.
He said she has also demanded disclosure of names of those 50 Indians, who were holding huge bank accounts in Germany and whose list was formally handed over by the German government to Indian authorities.
