Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya on Tuesday hit out at Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Akhilesh Yadav for speaking about the plight of migrant workers (Express File Photo by Vishal Srivastav)

Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya on Tuesday hit out at Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav for speaking about the plight of migrant workers, saying they were only showing “virtual concerns” on Twitter and not helping the people on the ground.

“I pity their tweets on the plight of the people of Uttar Pradesh because they lack facts and are far from the ground reality. Our Chief Minister [Yogi Adityanath] and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have taken extraordinary measures not only to save the lives of the people but also for their economic welfare during the lockdown,” Maurya told reporters in Meerut through an online press conference.

The BJP leader also hit out at Priyanka over the Congress offer of arranging 1,000 buses to ferry the migrants, saying that the documents of the buses were forged. Maurya said that Priyanka “left her state unit chief Ajay Kumar Lallu in a lurch by sending him to Agra for buses which had forged documents”.

Lallu was arrested twice on May 20 – first by Agra police for holding a protest and then by Lucknow police on charges of forgery and cheating. He was denied bail by a special court on Monday. “The UP Congress chief is in jail because an FIR has been lodged against him in this connection. The law is now taking its own course,” Maurya added.

He also blamed Tablighi Jamaat for the spread of coronavirus. “The cases were few and far before the Tablighi Jamaat’s role came into limelight. Once the infection started growing through the Jamaatis, the number of cases has increased manifold,” he said.