What's disturbing Adityanath from celebrating one year in power bash in UP?
The ruling BJP's humiliating defeat in the two Lok Sabha by-elections in Gorakhpur and Phulpur may not have mellowed down chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who went ahead with loud celebrations to mark the completion of his first year in office here on Monday (March 19). However, a noticeable dissenting voice emerged from none other than cabinet minister Om Prakash Rajbhar, who heads Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, a BJP ally.
Even though the ally has only four members in Uttar Pradesh’s 403-member Assembly where the BJP has an overwhelming strength of 324, Rajbhar’s audacity to speak up cannot be underscored.
Rajbhar has blasted Yogi and his government on every count for which the chief minister was busy patting his own back - be it the state’s much-debated law and order , the much-hyped "development", all the loud talk about welfare of farmers, claims of creation of employment, healthcare and the overall well-being of the common people.
Just as Yogi was gloating over his one-year’s “achievements” and was presiding over a jamboree organised in the opulent Rs 600-crore Lok Bhawan, built as the chief minister’s new office by his rival predecessor Akhilesh Yadav, a "rebel" Rajbhar got down to running him down, blow by blow.
Keeping himself away from the celebrations - marked by colourful dance and music - Rajbhar went on record to express his strong reservations against the overall working of the Yogi government.
"We had decided to join hands with the BJP not for holding such extravaganza, but in the larger interest of the well-being of the deprived and backward castes who could never get the benefit of the 27 per cent reservation that was hogged away by a few privileged OBCs only," he said.
"Even though one year has passed, the BJP has failed to keep its promise of giving these deprived castes such as Rajbhars, Binds, Kevats, Prajapatis, Lohars, etc, their due; as it stands today, we have not been able to even ensure issue of rations cards to them, not to talk about things like building toilets in their homes or other such welfare schemes," he lamented.
Accusing Yogi Adityanath of being focused only on building temples, Rajbhar felt "the CM's priorities are all mixed up and more than anything else, he is only interested in building temples - even at the cost of igniting violence between communities".
He questioned Yogi’s oft-repeated claims on law and order and asked: "Not a single day passed when there wasn't a major crime. How is law and order under control or better than it was under the previous regime? Where is the change? Yet, the chief minister is busy proclaiming that he has transformed the state. I am not ready to buy all that.”
Rajbhar appears to be further cut up with the BJP because Amit Shah has not bothered to give him an audience that he was seeking. "Now if Amit Shah does not meet me, my party will boycott the Rajya Sabha election, we will just not go to vote," he asserted while issuing an indirect threat that could affect the fate of the BJP’s ninth candidate for the Rajya Sabha poll.
Twelve months ago, when Yogi Adityanath became the chief minister, there were lot of expectations from him. After all, that was for the first time in the history of the state that a saffron-clad sadhu-turned-politician was elevated to the coveted office.
Yogi’s clean image together with the reputation of a taskmaster led everyone to believe that the country’s most-populous state would witness a transformation .
However, what actually happened during this period was a lot of lip service and very little result on ground. Taking advantage of his loud and assertive ways, Yogi was out to impress upon all and sundry that all was hunky-dory in the state.
Simply by unleashing a spate of 1,100-odd encounters, that led to the killing of a few “innocents” too, the chief minister felt, he had brought the law and order under control. He did not even care to check that quite a few of the 43 who were actually gunned down in these encounters, were not really hardened criminals. The chief minister may be claiming that each of those killed in the encounters were criminals carrying rewards on their heads, but the fact of the matter was that in some cases, the reward was announced barely a few days before the encounter. Some were shot soon after they were granted bail by courts.
A high-profile Investor’s Summit organised in Lucknow last month for several hundred crores of rupees, gave Yogi the handle to proclaim the promise of a Rs 5 lakh crore investment in the state. He chose to conveniently overlook that similar tall promises had been made by the same industrial house during previous regimes. And he also did not care to find out how many of the same investors had committed similar investment in other states, where similar summits were held over the past few months.
Significantly, the chief minister continues to remain in denial over the death of 70 children due to lack of oxygen in the medical college in his own Gorakhpur city, from where won five consecutive elections. The neglect of the city is visible in the stink on account of filth and squalor, that has become the breeding ground for the deadly Japanese encephalitis virus that has been perennially taking lives of thousands of children.
Ironically, while Yogi was busy announcing the launch of an anti-corruption portal to get a grip over the rampant corruption in the government, Om Prakash Rajbhar did not mince words in charging his government of failure to control the all-pervading corruption.
"Far from bringing corruption under control, the government had grossly failed to curb its rise," Rajbhar pointed out, while adding, as a matter of fact, the "rates of illegal money have gone up at all levels, and the worst sufferer is the poor man".
Yogi Adityanath might be using all the resources at his command to drown dissenting notes like that of Rajbhar, but there is no way he can evade answering the issues raised at a juncture when the government was out to blow its trumpet on its first anniversary.