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BJP launches intellectual meets across UP
UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath talks about students’ welfare in Kashi, UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh slams Congress, SP in Ayodhya
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) launched its prabuddh varg sammelans (intellectual meets) across Uttar Pradesh on Sunday.
At one such meeting in Varanasi, chief minister Yogi Adityanath appealed to Kashi’s scholars to find an alternative to impart education to a large number of students, who lack gadgets like tablets and computers, if the Covid-19 pandemic stretches for long.
At another meet in Ayodhya, UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh targeted the Congress for coining the word “Hindu terror” and the SP for allowing firing on kar sevaks in Ayodhya in 1990.
The intellectual meets launched on Sunday from various places across the state would continue till September 20.
Making the appeal about students’ education in Varanasi, Adityanath said: “I visit flood-affected areas daily. During my visit to a flood-affected area, I met a student and asked him in which class he studied. The student informed that he attended school up to fourth standard and stopped going to school thereafter as the school was closed (due to Covid-19). He doesn’t go to school anymore.”
“We can impart education to the children belonging to well-off families equipped with digital devices. But a large number of children belong to the financially weaker section. These children lack mobile phones, tabs or laptops. For these children, I want to appeal all the teachers to find an alternative to provide education to children, if the pandemic lasts long. Think, if the guru-shishya parampara (tradition) may be an alternative or teachers may visit students’ villages and teach them,” he said.
Stating that schools cannot be closed for long time, he said despite that there must be preparedness to deal with any situation.
He also said that before 2017, people used to say that there was goonda raj and corruption in UP and no one could free it from these problems. But his government had changed the perception about UP, the chief minister said.
Now people in other states believe that UP’s law and order is the best in the country, he added.
Without mentioning any opposition leader, Yogi said, “The people who used to avoid visiting the temples in Kashi, Mathura and Ayodhya, now they are competing to visit the temples.”
Yogi said that after independence in 1947, UP’s per capita income was equivalent to nation per capita income. But by 2016, it decreased to one third. Several steps have been taken and in days to come, the per capita income of UP will increase, he said.
In Ayodhya, Swatantra Dev Singh said, “... the Samajwadi Party leadership had okayed firing on karsevaks in Ayodhya in 1990. That firing was actually on the nationalistic and cultural ideology of the nation.” Deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya was in Kanpur for the ‘prabuddh varg sammelan’ while UP BJP in-charge Radha Mohan Singh was in Prayagraj.
UP co-general secretary (in-charge) Karamvir was in Saharanpur, BJP’s national vice president Rekha Verma was in Chitrakoot, national general secretary Arun Singh was in Mathura.
Other leaders present for the event at various places across the state included national secretary Vinod Sonker (Agra). Several union ministers including Sanjeev Balyan (Ghaziabad), VK Singh (Meerut), Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Jhansi), Bhanu Pratap Verma (Moradabad), Kaushal Kishore (Noida), BL Verma (Bareilly), Pankaj Choudhary (Gorakhpur), Ajay Mishra (Shahjahanpur) also addressed these meetings.
BJP leader Subrat Pathak, who is in-charge of these intellectual meets, said they would be held in all 403 assembly constituencies of the state.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) too has similarly named its Brahmin outreach campaigns across the state as ‘prabuddh varg sammelans and BJP leaders admit that in their meetings too, Brahmin community leaders would participate.
