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Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council: Yogi Adityanath attacks Samajwadi Party over caste, Ramcharitmanas agenda
Yogi Adityanath also says before 2017, the youngsters of the state were suffering from an “identity crisis” and criminals were running a “parallel government”
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday attacked the Samajwadi Party (SP), the principal opposition in the state, over its “caste and Ramcharitmanas agenda.”
He also said before 2017, the youngsters of the state were suffering from an “identity crisis” and criminals were running a “parallel government”. The Yogi Adityanath had assumed office for the first time in March 2017.
“The SP talks about caste and Ramcharitmanas to divert attention from the efficient double engine government...but people of U.P. have put those who questioned Lord Ram’s existence and legacy of Sant Tulsidas (who wrote the timeless epic) in their right place,” he said in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad).
The chief minister was speaking on the budget that was presented in the state assembly on February 22.
Samajwadi Party leader Swami Prasad Maurya had triggered a controversy in January when he pointed out certain verses in the Tulsidas-authored Ramcharitmanas were derogatory to backwards, Dalits, and women. He had demanded that either those parts be removed or the entire Ramcharitmanas be banned.
The chief minister also said the state’s then poor status in health and education of children, hunger deaths and farmers’ suicides were ignored by the SP government.
He said: “An estimated 50,000 children died in eastern UP and the Terai region of the state in 40 years till 2017. During this period, the state saw Samajwadi Party governments four times. The SP leaders never even bothered to go and just take a look. Most of the children who died were from Dalit and deprived families. While they talk about caste, we have put a complete stop to encephalitis deaths of children.”
The chief minister also said, “Before 2017, there was an identity crisis among the youth of Uttar Pradesh. Farmers were committing suicide, poor people were facing starvation, there were deaths due to starvation and women were not safe,” Yogi Adityanath said
“Those involved in organised crime were running a parallel government. Be it land, mining or forest, all types of the mafia were flourishing,” he said.
The situation has changed in the past six years, Yogi Adityanath said, adding, “Now they (the youth) can say with pride that they belong to Uttar Pradesh and have been educated here.” “Team U.P. has made this change possible,” he said.
He said the previous government held their investors’ summit in Delhi or Mumbai, while “we began holding it in U.P”.
“At our first U.P. Investors Summit in February 2018, ₹4.68 lakh crore proposals came, while now in 2023, ₹35 lakh crore proposals were received. Earlier, investments came only for NCR (national capital region of the state, largely Noida), now there are proposals from every single district of the total 75 districts,” he said.
None of the SP MLCs, including Swami Prasad Maurya, was in the Legislative Council when Yogi spoke there on Thursday. They had left before the chief minister arrived. The Samajwadi Party has only nine members in the 100-member Upper House while the BJP has 74.
