Stage set for Maya’s b’day celebrations today

LUCKNOW: Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leaders and workers are all geared up to celebrate the 63rd birthday of party chief Mayawati as ‘Jan Kalyankari Diwas’ (public welfare day) on Tuesday. The party workers will cut 63 kg cake, distribute sweets, fruits and pledge to make Mayawati the next PM in the programme organised by the district units in all the 75 districts of the state. In Lucknow, the party’s district unit will celebrate the birthday at Gandhi Bhawan.

The main birthday celebration programme will be organised in the state unit office located on Mall Avenue. Mayawati will release the fourteenth volume of ‘A Travelogue of My Struggle Ridden Life and BSP movement’. A BSP spokesperson said the party supporters would assist the poor on the occasion.

Alliance partner and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is likely to visit Mayawati’s residence on 9 Mall Avenue with senior party leaders to greet her. She will leave for Delhi in the evening for celebrations with leaders of other political parties, party office-bearers and family members.

Announcing her party’s alliance with the SP on Saturday, Mayawati had said the BSP and SP had finalized 38 seats each on which both the parties will field candidates.

A BSP leader said, the party chief had finalized the candidates on majority of the seats but there were issues in a few seats.

She might release the 38 candidates’ list on Tuesday or do so after another round of meetings with SP leaders in Delhi on January 16-17, he said.

Along with the coalition leaders, she will celebrate

the birthday with the leaders of the BSP’s all-India unit in Delhi. She will mull over fielding candidates in MP, Bihar, Jharkhand,

Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttarakhand and Telangana in the Lok Sabha election.