About Mayawati

  Kumari Mayawati is an Indian politician who is a former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. She heads the Bahujan Samaj Party, which represents the Bahujans or Dalits, the weakest strata of Indian society. She completed four terms as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, but lost the 2012 legislative assembly elections to the rival Samajwadi Party. She resigned from her post on 7 March 2012 . An icon for millions of India's Dalits, who were oppressed by the Hindu upper castes for centuries, she is sometimes referred to as "Behen-ji" (sister). Mayawati's rise from humble beginnings has been called a "miracle of democracy" by P. V. Narasimha Rao, former Prime Minister of India. In 1993 she formed a coalition with the Samajwadi Party and emerged, at 39, the youngest chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and the first Dalit woman Chief Minister in India. In 1997 and in 2002, she