September 20, 2003	Saturday	Rajab 22, 1424

NEW DELHI, Sept 19: A former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state said on Friday she was being framed in a multimillion-dollar scandal over the world famous Taj Mahal because she belonged to India’s lowest Hindu caste.

Mayawati launched the attack a day after the Supreme Court told the police to bring criminal charges against her for her links to a plan to build a garish shopping mall near the 17th-century mausoleum.

The court, which halted the project in July, also told police to verify the assets of Mayawati and her close associates following charges that they accepted huge bribes to give their green signal for the mall’s construction.

The former chief minister accused India’s political establishment, bureaucracy and the media of conspiring to frame her because she belonged to the lowest Hindu caste called the Dalits, once known as Untouchables.

“Has there been any probe since India’s independence in 1947 of the wealth gathered through dubious means by politicians or their kin who belong to upper castes?” the schoolteacher-turned-politician told reporters in New Delhi.

Mayawati broke a legislative alliance with India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and quit last month as chief minister, a post she held three times in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.

“Political parties and the media found it unpalatable that a Dalit woman has been chief minister three times of India’s most crucial state... They are biased and that is why they are conspiring against me,” Mayawati said.

Mayawati, who projects herself as a messiah for India’s millions of lower-caste people, rejected charges that she has amassed millions of dollars by using her political clout.

“I have declared all my assets to the income tax authorities. Everything I own is listed... It is all a plot to defame me,” she said.

The top court halted the construction after conservationists equated it to the destruction over two years ago of ancient statues of Buddha in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province by the hardline Taliban regime.

India’s rigid caste hierarchy was outlawed when India won independence from Britain 56 years ago. But it persists in the day-to-day interaction of many of India’s one billion-plus people.

According to official statistics, more than 28,000 crimes, including murder and rape, were committed in India last year by members of higher castes against lower castes.

The Indian government has called for an end to caste-related discrimination but has strongly opposed campaigners’ efforts to discuss the issue at international fora.—AFP