'In fact, no sooner than the news broke out about the UPCC (Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee) president's objectionable remarks against me, BSP workers across the country had decided to go up in arms and stage street demonstrations everywhere. However, in the larger interest of maintaining peace and harmony in the nation, I prevailed over them in urging them to maintain calm and not react.'

She said: 'I felt that any reaction by my partymen would have led to uproar that could have unnecessarily caused sufferings to innocent people simply because of certain irresponsible and deplorable utterances by this woman (Joshi).'

At the same time, she said: 'We have taken a serious note of the incident and have ordered an independent inquiry into it.'

The BSP chief also referred to a book by Joshi on her father, late Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, in which she, according to Mayawati, was critical of the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Displaying a copy of the book, she said: 'Simply because Sonia Gandhi chose to condone the objectionable writing by this woman against the Gandhi family, she started thinking no end of herself so much so that now she had the audacity to make obscene remarks against me.'