Auraiya is a nondescript town in the vast swathe of Gangetic plains in Uttar Pradesh. Four days before demitting the chief minister’s office in her second term in 1997, Mayawati had taken out two sub-divisions – Bidhuna and Auraiya – out of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s home district Etawah, to carve out a new district called Auraiya. Not only that, she also lured away a local leader Shekhar Tiwari from Mulayam’s Samajwadi Party. Little did Mayawati know that her own creation would 
become a thorn in her flesh 11 years later.
For the first time in over a decade, she was forced to cut down on the extravagance and grandiosity of her birthday celebrations which has been marked in party’s calendar as Fund Raising Day. Ten days before that, Tiwari tortured an executive engineer of state’s Public Works Department (PWD), Manoj Kumar Gupta, to his death because the latter was unable to fulfill the MLA’s demand for money to be ‘donated’ to the chief minister on her birthday.
The incident pushed Mayawati on the defensive, as the otherwise somnolent Congress and staid Bharatiya Janata Party took to the streets to condemn ‘killings to celebrate chief minister’s birthday’. The principal opposition formation, Samajwadi Party leaders too upped the ante demanding a CBI inquiry into this ‘fund raising’. Said former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, “Mayawati has fixed a quota of Rs 10 lakh for each Member of Legislature and Rs 50 lakh for each MP, to be raised for her birthday. She has given her party workers a license to loot and extort.” The SP mocked Mayawati by sending party workers to ‘beg’ on the streets for a ‘fundraising’ drive for her birthday.....Continue
become a thorn in her flesh 11 years later.For the first time in over a decade, she was forced to cut down on the extravagance and grandiosity of her birthday celebrations which has been marked in party’s calendar as Fund Raising Day. Ten days before that, Tiwari tortured an executive engineer of state’s Public Works Department (PWD), Manoj Kumar Gupta, to his death because the latter was unable to fulfill the MLA’s demand for money to be ‘donated’ to the chief minister on her birthday.
The incident pushed Mayawati on the defensive, as the otherwise somnolent Congress and staid Bharatiya Janata Party took to the streets to condemn ‘killings to celebrate chief minister’s birthday’. The principal opposition formation, Samajwadi Party leaders too upped the ante demanding a CBI inquiry into this ‘fund raising’. Said former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, “Mayawati has fixed a quota of Rs 10 lakh for each Member of Legislature and Rs 50 lakh for each MP, to be raised for her birthday. She has given her party workers a license to loot and extort.” The SP mocked Mayawati by sending party workers to ‘beg’ on the streets for a ‘fundraising’ drive for her birthday.....Continue
