PRESENTING A report card of the first two years of his government, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath Tuesday claimed that the state was in bad shape when the BJP took over but the situation changed for the better in the last 24 months with no incident of rioting under his watch.
PRESENTING A report card of the first two years of his government, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath Tuesday claimed that the state was in bad shape when the BJP took over but the situation changed for the better in the last 24 months with no incident of rioting under his watch.
Talking to mediapersons in Lucknow, Adityanath alleged that the SP and BSP were in power in the state for seven times in total (SP four and BSP three) and all they did was loot the resources, give shelter to mafias and make a long list of scams.
“Payment for sugarcane was pending for several years. Health facilities were in bad shape. There was goondaraj and anarchy. There were frequent riots and people were forced to leave their homes. After our government came to power, those who left their houses came back. A majority of Hindus who had to leave their homes in towns such as Kairana and Kandla have returned,” he claimed.
Reiterating that encounter killings curb crime, Adityanath said criminals were killed under his government’s “zero tolerance policy” to crime and from March 2017 there were 3,539 police encounters with 8,135 criminals arrested and 73 killed. Nearly 600 policemen were injured in these encounters and five were killed, added the CM.
On the poll campaign by Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in the state through river route, he said, “Now, the Congress and other opposition parties have no right to question the purity of Ganga water. I am very happy that Priyanka is visiting Varanasi from Prayagraj through boat. [It] Would have been better if [Congress president] Rahul Gandhi was with her, along with his friends from SP-BSP and then thanked [Prime Minister] Modi ji… The work SP-BSP and four generations of Congress’s Priyanka Gandhi’s family could not do was completed by the Prime Minister’s Namami Gange project,” he said.
On farmers, the CM said, “Earlier, middlemen were dominating on purchase policy but we directly purchased wheat, paddy and potatoes from the farmers. We are thankful that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the system of MSP. There was no payment of sugarcane of amount Rs 55,000 crore and we made a payment of Rs 57,000 crore in two years.”
Yogi claimed that two crore and 14 lakh farmers in the state benefited from his government’s schemes, adding that 1.12 crore families were given LPG connections under Ujjwala Yojna and around one lakh government primary schools were provided proper resources in these two years.
Talking about the Purvanchal Expressway, he said alleged that the previous SP government passed tenders for the project even when the land was not finalised.
“When I take the name of Purvanchal Expressway, some people starts remembering a lot of things. The SP government started it, but when after assuming power I asked about this, I was told that the land is not there and the tender has been finalized. I then cancelled the tender and did it again after completing the process of land acquisition,” Yogi said, adding that while the SP government was making the expressway in Rs 15,200 crore, they are making it in only in Rs 11,800 crore that too when their expressway is wider than that of SP’s.
He added that while Metro was already functional in Lucknow, Noida and Ghaziabad, work would soon start on Kanpur and Agra metro. He also claimed that his government organised three big events – the Investor’s Summit, The Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas and the Kumbh Mela – with great success, and are working towards bringing more tourism in Uttar Pradesh, which is a state with great potential.