Mayawati accuses Nitish of betraying people of Bihar

New Delhi/Lucknow, July 27 (IANS) BSP chief Mayawati on Thursday accused Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of betraying the people of the state by abandoning the Grand Alliance and forming a new government with the help of the BJP.

In a statement issued here, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo said the people of Bihar voted against the "so-called Modi wave" and gave a stunning defeat to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"They gave the majority to the grand alliance of secular parties and that mandate should have been respected for complete five years, which did not happen. It is difficult to call this right," she said.

Her remarks came after Nitish Kumar on Thursday took oath as Bihar Chief Minister at the head of a JD-U-BJP government, within hours of dumping the Grand Alliance with Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress.

Hitting out the BJP, she said that the "hunger for more power" was leading the BJP into misusing government machinery and investigative agencies.

Linking the Bihar developments to that of Goa and Manipur, she also said that the democratic values in the country were being weakened by such lust of power and urged the people of the country to come forward and "save the country" from this "worrying situation"

Mayawati also accused the BJP of misusing the government machinery and said it was endangering the democratic system of the country.

"After Manipur and Goa, recent political developments in Bihar prove that under the Modi government, the future of democracy is in danger," she said.

The BJP formed governments in Goa and Manipur despite securing less number of seats than the Congress.