‘Exploited poor’: GB Nagar SP candidate hits out at BJP

Nagar, the INDIA bloc leader whose candidature was only confirmed by the SP after three rounds of changes and deliberations inaugurated his election camp office in Jewar and sought votes at Jhajhar Nagar, Dankaur Nagar, Bhatta Parsaul and Junaidpur

GREATER NOIDA: Samajwadi Party’s Lok Sabha candidate from the Gautam Budh (GB) Nagar constituency, Mahendra Singh Nagar launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday, saying that the saffron party during its reign had “exploited the poor to benefit a few capitalists”.

Samajwadi Party candidate Mahendra Singh Nagar filing his nomination for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Gautam Buddh Nagar district earlier this month. (PTI FILE PHOTO.)

“A wave of change is going on in the country. In the last 10 years there has been a lying government in the country whose priority is to exploit the poor and benefit a few capitalists. During the BJP rule, inflation and unemployment have increased unexpectedly in the country but instead of discussing the basic problems of the people, BJP is misleading them in the name of religion,” Nagar said.

However, the BJP hit back saying that in the last 10 years, GB Nagar has witnessed a lot of new projects, like the Noida airport which are staked at Rs. 1 Lakh crore. “We have bolstered the life of everyone, including the farmers. We have a beneficiary [of the central schemes] in every home in the district,” BJP’s media incharge Karamveer Arya said.

Nagar, the INDIA bloc leader whose candidature was only confirmed by the SP after three rounds of changes and deliberations inaugurated his election camp office in Jewar and sought votes at Jhajhar Nagar, Dankaur Nagar, Bhatta Parsaul and Junaidpur.

Speaking of the plight of the farmers who have been affected by the upcoming Jewar airport in Gautam Buddh Nagar and been protesting against the loss of land, livelihood and inadequate compensation since 2017, Nagar reiterated how, “They (farmers) have neither received proper compensation nor been displaced properly.”

The protesting farmers main dissent is a government notification changing the status of the proposed site from rural to urban. This legally halves the compensation amount as per the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act, 2013, under which compensation is two times the market rate for urban land and four times the market rate for rural land.

Sharing details of the outreach programme by the SP had initiated as part of the campaigning process, party’s national spokesperson Pradeep Bhati said they had compiled a promise document which had all the guarantees the SP-INDIA alliance had to offer and what the BJP could not complete in the last 10 years, which would be distributed to people.

“Our booth level agents are going door to door and at the same time, we are distributing this document which covers the entire nation and especially GB Nagar,” the SP spokesperson said.

Bhati added said that during Tuesday’s event, leaders from the Neemka village adopted by Gautam Budh Nagar MP and Union minister Dr Mahesh Sharma under Sansad Aadarsh Gram Yojna (SAGY) in 2015 - were present at the rally and that the village administration had decided to boycott BJP’s Sharma.

Reacting to this, BJP’s GB Nagar district Gajendra Mavi said, “The village has no administration and the whole village is ours and we are regularly attending programmes in the village and have not sensed anything like that in the village. Few people in the village might say they are in support of the Opposition but they hardly make up for the mandate of the people of the village. Vote percentage is with the BJP.”