Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday rebutted the charges of opposition on zero tolerance towards crime, employment, and free food grains. The chief minister also accused the opposition of double standards by questioning the EVM (electronic voting machines).
“Leader of the opposition is insulting the people’s mandate. The people have returned the Bharatiya Janata Party to power due to its hard work and welfare works done for the people by the government. The people know who has laid the foundation of development works and which government actually completed the work. After 37 years a government has been voted back to power in Uttar Pradesh,” the chief minister said in UP Vidhan Sabha on Friday while replying to the debate on the motion of thanks to Governor Anandiben Patel’s address to the joint sitting of the UP legislature.
“The issues raised by the leader of the opposition are amazing. A political leader makes pep talk in election meetings. It would have been better if the leader of opposition had spoken as per the ground realities,” he said.
The chief minister also lashed out at the opposition for creating disturbances during the governor’s address.
“UP assembly is neither a platform for election campaigns nor for making personal attacks and allegations. Slogans were raised in favour of the leader of the opposition. The governor’s address was about the road map of development of UP and unruly behaviour by the opposition was an anti-development act,” the chief minister said.
In an obvious dig at the leader of opposition, Akhilesh Yadav, the chief minister said, “Arrogance follows when we feel that we have done something. Respect occurs when the common people say that we have done something. The mandate given to the BJP is proof of that.”
“The leader of the opposition delivered a long speech. It would have been better had he spoken about his government when he was the chief minister. His tenure in government was marked by a series of scams – scam in recruitment by UP Public Service Commission, scam in recruitment in cooperative institutions, irregularities in recruitment in UP Jal Nigam, public distribution system (PDS) food grain scam and mining scam. The then mining minister is still in jail,” the chief minister said.
“The BJP earned the confidence of the people on the basis of our performance. We never made tall claims that we built the expressway, built the airports, gave free food grains and did other development works. The people rejected the canards and rumours and gave us an overwhelming mandate and a government was voted back to power after 37 years and it started working with a bang,” the chief minister argued.
Explaining the victory of the BJP in recent assembly polls, Yogi Adityanath said, “If the opposition party wins, It is okay. If the BJP wins then EVMs are tampered. It is an insult of the people and their mandate.”
He added, “UP is a big state where all previous governments must have made efforts to win the support of the people, but failed to meet the aspirations of the people. The BJP won the trust of the people.”
Referring to the recent UP assembly elections, the chief minister said, “There was no violence in UP, neither during nor after elections. What would have happened if there was no BJP government in UP.”
Referring to the election campaign by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in UP, Yogi Adityanath said, “A didi from Bengal had come here during the assembly elections. While there were incidents of widespread violence during elections in West Bengal where violent incidents took place in 142 out of 242 constituencies and 25,000 booths were affected by it. More than 10,000 BJP workers were forced to go to the shelter home, 57 people were murdered and 123 women were molested.”
Yogi added, “All this happened in West Bengal where the population is half of the population of UP.”
The chief minister asserted, “Our mission is not grabbing power but the nation and we must abide by the parliamentary and democratic traditions.”
