Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and BSP chief Mayawati on Monday attacked the Centre over the growing incidents of attacks on Dalits in the country.

Demanding that Union Minister VK Singh be sent to jail for his alleged comments against the Dalit children who were killed in Faridabad, she said intolerance, communalism and anarchy were spreading in the country under the present government.

She did not spare the Congress too during a debate on the Commitment to Constitution in the Rajya Sabha here on Monday. She said the Congress tried to defeat BR Ambedkar in his election to the Constituent Assembly. She said the BJP was silent about the growing incidence of intolerance. “People from the BJP and affiliated Hindu organisations keep making controversial undignified remarks. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is the head of the government, keeps silent,” she said, and urged the government to take firm steps to curb attacks against Dalits. “Prime Minister Modi said a lot in his concluding remarks during the debate on Constitution (in Lok Sabha) on Friday. It would have been better if he had announced some decision to amend the Constitution for reservation to the weaker sections of the society in the private sector and reservation for SC/STs in promotion,” she maintained.

Making a veiled attack against the dialogues between the Congress and the BJP, she said she does not need a meeting over tea to take a decision on the Goods and Services Tax. “If your government is fully confident that bringing the GST Bill is in the interest of the nation, it will bring a change in the economy and give a boost to it, the BSP will definitely back it. Our party supports the Bill,” she added.

BJP leader MJ Akbar said there could not be economic equality without econo-mic equity. He said the then government’s decision on Shah Bano case was a setback to Muslim women.

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