Maya erupts on Wiki

Mayavati

Lucknow, Sept. 6: Mayavati today dubbed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a paagal (mad) who belonged to “a mental asylum” after the whistleblower website claimed she had sent an empty plane to bring her favourite sandals from Mumbai.

“I would request the government of his (Assange’s) country to send him to a mental asylum and if they have no place for him in any mental asylum there, we can put him in our Agra mental hospital,” the Uttar Pradesh chief minister said.

Assange retorted hours later. “She (Mayavati) is welcome to send her private jet to England to collect me, where I have been detained against my will, under house arrest, for the last 272 days. I would be happy to accept asylum, political asylum, in India — a nation I love. In return, I will bring Mayawati a range of the finest British footwear,” the Australian said in a statement released to the media.

Mayavati termed the WikiLeaks reports “false, mischievous and derogatory”, and meant to damage the image of her government ahead of state elections scheduled for April next year. She did say if she planned to file a defamation case.

The attacks came as rivals BJP and the Samajwadi Party seized on the reports to renew allegations of poor governance and lavish lifestyle against the chief minister, who has earlier been under court fire for building statues of herself and BSP leaders with public money.

But Mayavati hit back at her adversaries, telling workers of her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) that those at WikiLeaks could have “played into the hands of the Opposition parties”. “These reports are baseless to say the least. Expect more such canards in election season.”

Two of her key aides, Rajya Sabha member Satish Chandra Mishra and cabinet secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh, have denied ever having spoken to US embassy officials. The cable has claimed its information is based on purported conversations of the duo with US officials.

“When she needed new sandals, her private jet flew empty to Mumbai to retrieve her preferred brand,” said the cable dating back to 2008 and titled Mayawati: Portrait of a Lady. The cables are variously dated between 2007 and 2008. Mayavati was sworn in chief minister on May 13, 2007.

Mayavati asserted today that “she had no information when and how the plane had been sent to Mumbai to bring my sandals”. Instead, she took potshots at BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who had alleged yesterday that the cables revealed Mayavati's “dual face”. The BJP leader and the Wikileaks founder “appeared to have travelled in the same plane”, the chief minister said in a sarcastic vein.

Naqvi had also mentioned another cable that claimed the chief minister had food testers to check meals because she suspected poisoning attempts. To this, Mayavati said she wondered if Naqvi had “sneaked into her kitchen to clean her dishes and came to hear about it”.