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UP elections: Earlier funds spent on ‘kabristans’, now used for temples, says CM
UP elections: “Earlier, public funds were being utilised for constructing boundary walls of graveyards, but today, it is being spent on public welfare and temples,” Yogi Adityanath said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) uses public funds for welfare and temples whereas earlier administrations used it to construct boundary walls of “kabristans” (burial grounds), Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said on Wednesday, attacking the Samajwadi Party without naming it.
Adityanath was speaking at the fifth Deepotsav celebrations at the Ram Katha Park in Ayodhya, months before crucial assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh early next year.
“Earlier, public funds were being utilised for constructing boundary walls of graveyards, but today, it is being spent on public welfare and temples,” he said. “You (public) have made this possible due to the power of democracy.”
Adityanath condemned the firing on kar sevaks, or Hindu religious volunteers, in Ayodhya on October 30, 1990 and November 2, 1990 during the height of the Ram temple movement, and blamed the then SP government for it.
“No one can forget what happened in Ayodhya 31 years ago. Karsevaks were lathicharged. But today, flowers are showered over them,” he said.
“Whenever there is another kar seva in Ayodhya, their (SP) entire family will line-up (for kar seva),” the chief minister said in an apparent reference to the SP,
The CM also assured the gathering that the Ram temple will come up in Ayodhya by December 2023.
He inaugurated and laid foundation stones of projects worth ₹600 crore for Ayodhya. The chief minister announced extension of the free ration scheme for poor till the festive occasion of Holi in 2023. This scheme was to end in December.
He issued an appeal to people to follow Covid norms and get vaccinated as the pandemic was not over.
This is the fifth consecutive Deepotsav celebrations in Ayodhya. After coming to power in Uttar Pradesh in March 2017, the BJP government started celebrating Deepotsav in Ayodhya on Diwali eve every year.
In 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had courted controversy after he compared the number of cremation grounds with graveyards in the state.
“If you create kabristaan (graveyard) in a village, then a shamshaan (cremation ground) should be created. If electricity is given uninterrupted in Ramzan, then it should also be given during Diwali without a break. Bhedbhaav nahin hona chahiye (there should be no discrimination,” Modi told a rally in Fatehpur district during the state assembly elections in 2017.
The remarks were criticised by several political party leaders, with the Congress saying that the Prime Minister was talking “senseless things”, sensing his party’s “imminent” defeat in the polls.
