DEORIA (UP), Aug 29: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday accused the Samajwadi Party of corruption and extortion during its tenure, calling it a “gang of dacoits” and demanding that party president Akhilesh Yadav apologise to the people of the state.
Addressing a programme in Deoria where he laid the foundation stones for 80 development projects worth more than Rs 305 crore, Adityanath said Uttar Pradesh had overcome its earlier reputation for poor governance, insecurity and underdevelopment.
“SP means loot and extortion, SP means a gang of dacoits,” Adityanath said.
He alleged that the SP government had misused the state exchequer for personal interests and said Yadav should apologise to the people. He was referring to alleged irregularities in the construction of the Jayaprakash Narayan International Centre (JPNIC) in Lucknow.
The Chief Minister claimed that a “parallel government of mafias” had once operated in Uttar Pradesh but said the situation had changed under his government.
“Today, Uttar Pradesh has become what its name suggests and nobody calls it a ‘BIMARU’ state,” he said.
The term ‘BIMARU’, coined by demographer Ashish Bose in the mid-1980s, was used to describe Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, which were then considered among India’s poorest states.
Adityanath said the state’s law-and-order situation had improved significantly and claimed that mafias had been brought under control.
“Mafias have been reduced to dust. Those who breach the security of daughters and traders have only two places to go — they are either in jail or in hell,” he said.
Emphasising the importance of electing capable public representatives, the Chief Minister said good representatives lead to good governance and better development outcomes.
He alleged that before 2017, Uttar Pradesh lacked adequate development, security, employment and basic amenities for the poor, including housing, toilets, LPG connections, electricity and roads.
“Schools had become centres of cheating,” he alleged.
On encephalitis, Adityanath said the disease had historically caused fear across several eastern Uttar Pradesh districts, including Deoria, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Siddharthnagar, Kushinagar, Sant Kabir Nagar and Basti.
He blamed successive SP-Congress governments for failing to adequately address the problem, claiming that around 50,000 children had died from the disease over four decades.
Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi, Minister of State for Rural Development Vijay Lakshmi Gautam and MLAs Shalabh Mani Tripathi and Sabha Kunwar Kushwaha were among those present at the programme.
