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Yogi Adityanath presents UP govt’s report card, repeats ‘kabristan’ jab
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said the unemployment rate in the state reduced from 18% before 2017 to 3% while per capita income and credit deposit ratio had increased after the BJP came to power in 2017.
LUCKNOW: Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday pitched the Uttar Pradesh government, which is aiming to buck anti-incumbency in the assembly elections, as a progressive, technology-embracing regime that helped Uttar Pradesh register growth on most development indices.
Towards the end of the 78-minute presentation of his government’s report card at the UP BJP office in Lucknow, he also contrasted his government’s performance with that of the main opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) which, he said, only developed “kabristan ki diwar” (graveyard boundary walls) during its five-year rule, a reference to the previous Akhilesh Yadav government’s urban development minister Azam Khan sanctioning funds for boundary walls of Muslim graveyards,
The repeated references to “kabristan” in recent days is seen as an attempt to play up the appeasement charge against the SP as part of the BJP’s larger efforts to unite the Hindus ahead of elections where the ruling party is wary of people voting on caste lines.
Yogi Adityanath also accused the previous Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the SP governments of caste bias in government schemes while insisting that his government worked for all sections.
“The BSP regime would stop the scholarships and fee reimbursements of OBCs, the SP would do (it) with Dalit students. Unlike them, record scholarships and fee reimbursements were done under the BJP government,” Yogi Adityanath said. He also highlighted his government’s development of Hindu religious spots and tourism sites.
Though he didn’t take any questions, the chief minister, who will file his nomination from the Gorakhpur (urban) assembly seat on Friday, sought to underscore that the BJP was going in the election as one team.
With union information and broadcasting minister Anurag Thakur and deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma by his side, he wished good luck to the other deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, who was in Sirathu in Kaushambi, to file his nomination. While mentioning data from National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) to position his government as one that brought down crime, improved law and order, Adityanath charged the previous SP government with not being “technology friendly”.
Quoting another data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, he said, “The unemployment rate that was around 18% before 2017 is 3% now.”
He added that per capita income also increased and so did the banks’ credit deposit ratio in the state.
“They (opposition) were least bothered about technology,” he said, a counter to SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s oft-repeated charge that the chief minister was reluctant to embrace technology.
Stating that tablets and laptops were distributed to a record one crore students by his government in a transparent manner, he raised doubts over the SP government’s laptop distribution scheme.
“The Samajwadi Party claims that it distributed laptops during the party rule but, back then, 15 crore laptops were purchased but only six lakh were distributed,” he said.
“During the SP rule, there were just two cyber police stations. Now, there is a marked change. Back then, there weren’t any forensic labs and now they are coming up all across the state. Recruitment of women police personnel has been tripled, women beat cops have been posted in all gram panchayats, joint patrolling is on in border areas, e-prosecutions have been encouraged and police reforms that were a dream earlier have been undertaken,” he said.
He also said 80,000 fair price shops have been linked to electronic point of sale (e-PoS) machines to guard against corruption.
Yogi Adityanath also claimed that hunger deaths happened in UP before 2017.
“In 2016, when I was the Lok Sabha MP, I remember cases of hunger deaths in Kushinagar, Chitrakoot and Sonbhadra,” he alleged. The chief minister pointed out that his government ensured free rations to the poor even during the Covid-19 surge. He alleged that riots were a regular feature of the previous BSP regime (2007-2012) when 364 riots happened. There were 700 plus riots under Samajwadi Party (2012-17), he said, adding that his government’s tenure was free from “any riots or terror activities”.
He also said the improvement in law and order reflected positively on investment generation, which happened even during the Covid-19 surge.
Yogi Adityanath claimed his government restarted pension for widows, differently-abled and accused the previous regime of diverting social security pension for the weaker sections to party cadres.
