Hope you had some experience of going to a holy place.

Lucknow, Dec 25 (IANS) Ever since Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati declared that her birthday Jan 15 would be observed as ‘Aarthik sahyog diwas’ (financial support day), party leaders and units across the state have been bending over backwards to ensure the collection drive for the occasion is a stupendous success.
…
According to party insiders, amounts for the collection drive had been specified for different level of leaders – ministers, MPs, legislators, party functionaries and even key officials. And everyone was told to ensure the ‘aarthik sahyog diwas’ is a grand success.

Opposition leaders like Samajwadi Party state chief Shivpal Yadav alleged that Mayawati had ‘fixed a target of Rs.1,000 crore (Rs.10 billion) for the forthcoming birthday’.

…Her virtual second-in-command and the party’s national general secretary Satish Chandra Misra is understood to be carrying out a similar drive to mobilise handsome contributions for the proposed bash Jan 15. Misra’s cousin and chairman of the State Pollution Control Board Anil Misra, who has earlier shown his skills in mobilising funds, has reportedly already got down to business, knocking on the doors of big factories, tanneries and even smaller industrial units across the state.

According to a PWD executive engineer posted in Lucknow, ‘extortion is the order of the day – from mantri (minister) to MLA and even influential party functionaries, everyone is busy demanding his pound of flesh, which we must shell out or face the music’.

Unwilling to be named for fear of being hounded, the official went on to add: ‘You get brownie points if you can go beyond the quota assigned to you and if you fail then you be prepared to be shunted out of your place of posting. So either people compromise on the quality of construction or inflate costs; after all, neither we engineers nor the concerned contractors pay money out of our pockets.’

Engineers engaged in large scale constructions currently undertaken by the Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam are understood to be providing the lion’s share to the birthday hamper.

‘In fact, the extension in service to a top official of the corporation was dependent on how much contribution he could make,’ quipped a senior engineer of the organization on condition of anonymity.

(Hat Tip: Sh Kak)

1. Push our armed forces to near revolt because the Sonia-led-Congress-led-UPA has no respect for our men in uniform.

2. While the SLCLUPA PM is globe trotting with the nuclear begging bowl, the feisty Seema Goyal is climbing up and down the stairs of deaf men in Delhi because Sonia is ‘busy, the PM is preparing for Condy’s visit to Delhi and the President is holding all appointments waiting for Christian missionaries and human rights industrialists bleeding in the hearts for dead jihadis, to knock on her doors.

3.Soumya of Headlines Today is killed and the SLC CM of Delhi says blithely young women shldnt be adventerous.

4. Shivraj Patil tells the CM of Orissa what he must do and not do – medicines he wont swallow, gargle or even touch with the tip of his tongue.

5. Having passed the begging bowl successfully around in the US and France altho there isnt a dime in it even now, our SLCLUPA PM says attacks against christians is an international embarassment. Dear dear, jihadi attacks against hindus is passe, religious conversion can more and more resemble pimping in the name of religion and this doesnt embarass the man nor does the killing of young women in delhi every other day, that our sailors have been held hostage for over 20 days doesnt cost him to miss a step as he prances down to meet Condi, but attacks against chrsitians is an international embarassment.

6. But vote for Mayawati ladies and gentlemen, because i havent seen or heard the BJP on any of these issues. Has any of you? At least Mayawati is honest about her single-point agenda. She wants to ebcome the PM and why not. She cant be worse than the one we have and those wanting to become – Indian, Italian or half-Italian.