Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday said that with the growth of the samajwadi parivar (family), he was confident of forming the government in Uttar Pradesh in 2022 again.
“Old associates are coming back to the party and in coming times, we will fight the elections together and dislodge the Bharatiya Janata Party from power. The SP family has grown and we will surely form the government in the state in 2022,” Yadav told reporters.
“The BJP has adopted the UP model for winning election in Maharashtra. In UP they engineered defections in other parties as they knew they could not win election on their own strength. They have done the same thing in Maharashtra where they have engineered large-scale defections of senior leaders from Congress and Nationalist Congress Party,” Akhilesh Yadav said and added, “Samajwadi Party will do well in Maharashtra elections and will win a good number of seats.”
The SP chief debunked the 36-hour-long marathon session of UP legislature to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
“The UP Assembly did not set a good precedent by holding a 36-hour uninterrupted session. They could have run the Assembly for one week but the proceedings should have been conducted during the working hours. After all we are all human beings, why force someone to sit for 36 hours” the SP chief said.
“Why is the BJP so enamoured of doing all important things after sunset in the dark of night? (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi announced demonetisation in November 2016 after sunset and they did the same again by implementing the Goods and Services Tax at midnight,” the SP chief said.
The GST was launched in midnight on June 30, 2017.
Akhilesh Yadav also contradicted the claims made by the ministers during the special session.
“It’s a patent lie that the SP government wanted to privatise the Pradeshik Cooperative Dairy Federation. In fact, during my government, three dairy plants of 5 lakh litres capacity each were set up in Lucknow, Kanpur and Etawah by Amul and a similar plant was approved for Varanasi,” Akhilesh Yadav said.
The former chief minister of UP also contested the claim of the Yogi Adityanath government of opening a record number of new medical colleges in the state. He claimed that the BJP government had done nothing new and all the medical colleges being set up were approved during his regime in 2017.
Yadav said that the land for All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Rae Bareli and Gorakhpur was allotted by his government during 2012-2017.
The SP chief also criticised the state government for eating up one crore jobs by putting restrictions on the work of DJs in the state.  “Allahabad DJ Association members had met me and informed (me) about this,” he said.
He said that the BJP wanted to adopt Swadeshi and now they were depriving the backward people of their rights by privatising the central public sector undertakings.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s hope that a “very good news” awaits all also irked Akhilesh Yadav.
A day after Yogi Adityanath exhorted people to draw inspiration from Lord Ram and hoped a “very good news” awaits all, the SP chief asked how does the Chief Minister know what is going to happen in the court.
“The Chief Minister is saying a good news awaits all on Ayodhya issue. How does he know what is going to happen? The BJP have scant regards for the Constitution and law of the country. We always said we would accept, the country would accept the court’s decision,” Akhilesh Yadav said in reply to a reporter’s question.