War of words erupts between Yogi Adityanath and Akhilesh Yadav

The words Baba and Babua resonate as Yogi Adityanath and Akhilesh Yadav spar in the run-up to Uttar Pradesh assembly polls

A few months before the Uttar Pradesh assembly election, a war of words erupted between chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath was in Akhilesh Yadav’s home district on Saturday. (ANI FILE PHOTO)

After Akhilesh Yadav called Yogi “Baba” at an event earlier in the day, Adityanath took a jibe at the SP chief and said: “Babua, ye Twitter hi vote bhi de dega (This twitter will give you votes).”

The chief minister was in Akhilesh Yadav’s home district Etawah on Saturday late afternoon to inaugurate and lay foundations for projects worth about ₹475 crore. The projects he inaugurated included the Central jail in Etawah.

Hours before, Akhilesh, referring to Yogi Adityanath, had said: “Baba Mukhya Mantri should not contest an assembly seat, he is already on his way out.”

Akhilesh often refers to Adityanath as “Baba” (an apparent allusion to Yogi’s position as the chief priest of the Gorakhnath temple in Gorakhpur). Babua was a term frequently used by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati in the run-up to 2012 UP assembly polls to hit out at Akhilesh Yadav. At that time, Akhilesh Yadav often used to refer to Mayawati as bua (paternal aunt). Neither Mayawati nor Akhilesh uses Babua and Bua for each other anymore.

At the Etawah function, Yogi Adityanath hit out at Akhilesh Yadav for frequently accusing the BJP and him of “re-laying foundation stones and inaugurating or re-inaugurating previous SP government projects”.

“I congratulate you all on the inauguration and foundation of a total of 21 development works in Etawah on the day of Bhaiya Dooj. It happens only in the BJP government that we lay the foundation and then inaugurate the projects. When the intent is not clean, dishonesty and corruption rule. Even if power is attained by deceit, and foundation stones are laid, the public doesn’t leave them in a state to inaugurate the projects,” said Yogi Adityanath.

“We lay the foundation in shubh muhurat (auspicious time), and then inaugurate them in shubh muhurat. The projects for which we had laid foundation stones three years earlier, we are inaugurating them today,” he said.

The chief minister also mentioned Ayodhya to attack the SP without directly naming it.

“The glitters of the lamps of Ayodhya is shining the world over,” Yogi Adityanath said, adding that it was the same Ayodhya where people used to be scared to go earlier and where Rambhakts (devotees of Ram) were fired at (in 1990 when Akhilesh Yadav’s father Mulayam Singh Yadav was the Uttar Pradesh chief minister).

“I had come here (Etawah) twice during corona. But people of other parties were in home isolation e when you were in a crisis. They should be confined to their homes even during polls. They need to be given replies to by people in this manner only. Tell them, ‘Babua, ye Twitter hi vote bhi de dega’,” he further said.

Apart from raking up the “Ayodhya firing” against SP, Yogi also made reference to “kabristan (graveyard) boundary walls” and “Jinnah” against Akhilesh.

“Earlier money used to be spent on kabristan boundary walls, now money is spent on development projects. Someone is embracing mafia, while someone else is making Jinnah his ideal,” Yogi Adityanath said.

While the comment about Jinnah was aimed at Akhilesh Yadav, the remark about embracing the mafia apparently targeted at SP ally Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP). SBSP chief Om Prakash Rajbhar had made a statement on November 3 that if Mukhtar Ansari wants to contest the assembly polls, then SBSP will give him a ticket. Rajbhar had visited Ansari in Banda jail on November 2.

Akhilesh Yadav, at a public meeting in Hardoi on October 31, had said that leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and Muhammad Ali Jinnah had played a role in India’s freedom struggle.

In an obvious reference to the Samajwadi Party without naming it, Yogi said, “My family is the state’s 25 crore people, while for some their own clan was the state.”

Although the SP has not responded to Yogi Adityanath’s visit to Etawah on Saturday, when the chief minister’s trip to Etawah was announced on Wednesday, Akhilesh Yadav had said: “Okay. He must be coming to inaugurate some of the projects initiated by our government.”

Akhilesh Yadav had made the remark during his visit to his ancestral village Saifai (in Etawah).