The ever insatiable Indira Gandhi was increasing her involvement in UP’s politics, and the state had nearly lost all its autonomy by 1973. This overreach especially enabled her to fortify public opinion against Charan Singh. The BKD instigated direct attacks on Mrs. Gandhi’s centralised plan of industrialisation, seen clearly in Singh’s presidential address to the BKD national executive made on May 5, 1973. He notes that the party wishes to vivify Mahatma Gandhi’s old vision of an economy of self-employed persons, marked by cottage and small-scale industries, rather than large teeming mills and factories which only line the pockets of their owners. The BKD strengthened its support of minorities by urging an immediate judicial inquiry into the gruesome killing of 70 Muslims in a protest at the hands of the state police; the party also threw in its lot with the Scheduled Castes in the state, who had every reason to believe they were being discriminated against and the number of crimes perpetrated against them were on steady rise under the New Congress.