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Rajya Sabha member and Aam Aadmi Party’s UP incharge Sanjay Singh alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party was influencing the elections of block pramukhs by money and muscle power in Uttar Pradesh.
The AAP leader was speaking to news persons after a meeting with the state election commissioner to whom he complained about the BJP’s tactics and appealed to him to ensure transparent elections of block pramukhs. He was accompanied by AAP leaders.
Sanjay Singh alleged that the BJP was exerting undue pressure on the block development council (BDC) members to vote in favour of the ruling party’s candidates. He questioned if BJP had not enough zila panchayat members how it got a huge number of its candidates elected as chairpersons. Referring to a viral video of a block pramukh contestant, Raj Kumar Yadav, Singh said Yadav feared that he could be killed in an encounter. He added that inspectors of different police stations were sending threatening letters to BDC members, asking them to vote as per their wishes.
“After ‘hijacking’ the election of ZP chairpersons, the BJP is all set to hijack the elections of block pramukhs and this way they will destroy the primary unit of democracy,” Singh alleged. Singh said he had written a letter to the state election commissioner and requested him to take preventive action. “The SEC has assured us that he will write to all district magistrates and district police chiefs asking them to ensure that the election is not influenced in any way,” Singh said.
He challenged the BJP to go for direct elections of ZP chairpersons and block pramukhs if it was confident of people’s support. “The direct election by the people will make it clear which party has the largest public support,” he added. AAP state president Sabhajeet Singh, co-incharge of UP, Nadeem Asraf, state spokesman Vaibhav Maheshwari were also present. Singh also alleged a scam in the purchase of medical equipment, including ventilators for treatment of children, in UP. He said the King George’s Medical University was purchasing ventilators at the rate of Rs 10 lakh per piece when the same ventilator was being purchased by the state government at Rs 17 lakh.
“The state government purchased automatic tissue processors for Rs 56.40 lakh while its market price is Rs 4.19 lakh. The government purchased a dialysis machine for Rs 13.92 lakh in Saharanpur when the same machine is available for Rs 5 lakh. Similarly, hormonal analyzers were purchased at Rs 48.97 lakh while the same equipment is available at Rs 10.5 lakh in market,” he said while giving details of some of purchases made by the state government.
He also criticised Medical Health Minister Suresh Khanna for defending the officials, saying the state government, cabinet minister Suresh Khanna and Principal Secretary Alok Kumar agreed to give the tender to a company which was blacklisted. Singh showed the rate list of the medical equipment while countering the principal secretary’s tweet. He said the Yogi government spent Rs 22 lakh on each neonatal ventilator when it was purchased at the rate of Rs 12 lakh by the Arvind Kejriwal government in New Delhi.