Banda (UP): Those who do not have a family will not care for the people as they cannot comprehend the pain of a common household, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said in a veiled dig at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday.
He also sought to know from the people whether they wanted the “Yogi government or a Yogya (capable) government”.
“We are having families which is why we understand what the family members of a labourer or a farmer go through when he dies. Those raising a family understand the pain of an ordinary family. Those who do not have one will not and hence they will not care,” Yadav said at the ‘Samajwadi Vijay Rath Yatra’ here before moving to Mahoba.
On BJP’s slogan of “Damdaar Sarkar” (powerful government) in Uttar Pradesh, Yadav quipped they only tell “damdaar jhooth” (big lies).
“The BJP had assured jobs to shikshamitras. However, after four-and-a-half years, it has only killed the dreams of the youth who were expecting to be gainfully employed,” he alleged.
On the government’s move to provide tablets and smartphones to students, he retorted one cannot expect a chief minister, who cannot operate laptops and smartphones, to extend such facilities.
“Can a Baba chief minister operate a laptop? Now it is heard that he cannot even operate a smartphone. If he could, the government would have given them to our youth by now,” the SP chief said in a veiled attack on Chief Minister, as Yogi is also a Mahant (chief priest) of revered Gorakhnath temple.
Yadav alleged that the Yogi government deliberately leaked the question paper of the Teachers’ Eligibility Test (TET) as it would not be in a position to provide jobs to successful candidates.
He promised that Samajwadi Party will employ those with Basic Teachers Training and Bachelor of Education certification, if voted to power.
Yadav said though the people of Bundelkhand extended full support to the BJP in the previous assembly and Lok Sabha polls, the region saw no development.
“The government’s double engine failed by the time it reached Bundelkhand,” he said.
The SP chief alleged that incapacity of the government had left its citizens like “orphans” during the worst period of COVID-19 epidemic few months back.
Referring to an advertisement in which a popular bridge from Kolkata was inadvertently referred to as a work in Uttar Pradesh under Yogi Adityanath, Yadav said the government was visible only in pictures and there, too, it was caught with lies.
“Those who have peddled lies even in advertisements should be shown the way out,” he said.
Yadav said his government will either strengthen the existing schemes or launch new ones to empower the “mothers and sisters” of the region, if voted to power.
According to NITI Aayog, there are more than 32 lakh poor people in Bundelkhand.
Also read: UP govt cancels teachers’ exam after paper leak, Yogi says ‘guilty to be charged as gangsters’