With each passing episode, Mayawati is doing a disservice to herself. Her latest decision to have Uttar Pradesh Congress president Rita Bahuguna Joshi arrested for badmouthing her is another controversy which will highlight her impetuousness.

Yet, perhaps for the first time, Mayawati had some reason on her side. The Congress chief's allegations about the role played by money in covering up rape cases were outrageous enough to shock several members of her own party. But the chief minister spoilt her own case with her penchant for overreaction.

If she had brought a charge of defamation against Joshi, there wouldn't have been such a storm over the matter as at present. But, by arresting her under the law for protecting Dalits, Mayawati has raised the temperature to such an extent that a calm, logical approach is no longer possible. The situation has been compounded by the arson attack on Joshi's house in Lucknow.

It is entirely possible that Mayawati has created the furore on purpose. She had shown a similar tendency to overstep the limits by having Varun Gandhi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) arrested under the draconian National Security Act (NSA) for his anti-Muslim speeches during the election campaign in April-May.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader's preference for extreme measures is explained by a desire to show her core group of supporters, the Dalits, that she will go to any length to browbeat her opponents. By doing so, she is telling the Dalits that the old days of their oppression by the higher castes are over, and now that one of them is in power she may use a sledgehammer to swat a fly.

Arguably, the Dalit tsarina has become even more aggressive because of the growing belief that she is losing ground in Uttar Pradesh. After her stunning victory in the 2007 assembly elections, she hasn't quite fulfilled the promises of that time. Not only has the BSP's performance in the recent parliamentary polls been well below par, Mayawati is continually being dogged by unsavoury controversies.

The most notable of them is her narcissistic habit of building statues of herself alongside those of other Dalit leaders like B.R. Ambedkar and her own mentor Kanshi Ram. The evident wastage of public money in a palpably poor and backward state has attracted the Supreme Court's attention (although it has refused to intervene) and made her an object of ridicule among the chattering classes.

However, her object is evidently the same as the one which made her use the NSA against Varun Gandhi, which drew the apex court's ire, and the non-bailable Atrocities Act against Joshi -- to flex her administrative muscle to buttress her political cause. The act was meant to protect vulnerable Dalits, not to shield a powerful chief minister from verbal abuse, however derogatory.

Mayawati's no-nonsense attitude would have earned more kudos if she had shown an equal firmness in dealing with other law-breakers.