LUCKNOW/PATNA: UP chief minister and BJP’s saffron mascot, Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday tore into opposition, accusing it of pursuing the policy of caste and religious appeasement that ‘helped terrorism and Naxalism spread its wings in the country over the years’.
Kicking off his election campaign from Ramgarh seat in Bihar, Yogi launched a blistering attack on Congress and Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) saying that the two parties have only spread anarchy and communal enmity in the poll-bound state. “The people of Bihar will have to make a strong decision. And that’s exactly what I have come here for,” said Yogi who also addressed a rally in Araval and Karakat assembly constituencies.
Exhorting the electorate to realise that unlike the previous Congress-led UPA government, Yogi said that the BJP-led NDA was executing various development schemes without taking into consideration caste and religion.
“We speak of development, they speak of caste. We speak of country, they speak of family. We speak of 'sabka saath sabka vikas', they speak about people of one particular religious community of having the right over resources of the country,” Yogi said, maintaining that it was this very mentality was taking the country towards division even as BJP and its allies wanted to make the dream of ‘Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat’ turn true. “Development of the poor, farmers and women were never the agenda of the Congress. They just wanted one family to rule the country just like RJD aspired in Bihar,” he said.He said that earlier youth of Bihar used to hide their identity because of the poor image of their home state. “We do not want such government which pushes the youth into crime and terrorism,” he said.
Making an indirect reference to the fodder scam during the previous RJD government, Yogi took a pot shot calling the RJD leaders of having a big fat stomach. “They not only digested the food of the poor but also gulped the fodder of the cattle,” Yogi said, while accusing the Congress and RJD of executing corruption at the grass-roots level. He said that it was only under Nitish Kumar's government that Bihar touched new heights of development with the help of PM Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre. Yogi said that the opposition needed to be asked how many ration cards they issued, how many homes they provided to the people and how many health insurance cards were issued. “All this has been done by the Modi government,” he said.
In the Arval assembly constituency, Yogi slammed the Congress, RJD and Communist while accusing them of being the biggest road block in construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya. “But the BJP-led NDA government fulfilled their promise by getting construction of the temple started,” he said. Taking a jibe at Congress, Yogi said that some of the leaders of the grand old party were favouring Pakistan.
Speaking in Karakat, Yogi said that the Congress-RJD combined left the seat for CPI (ML) to bring back the memories of human massacre for which it has been known for long. He said that the slogans like ‘Bharat tere tukde honge’ which were raised in JNU no longer exist.“For the past seven months, the whole country is battling Corona. The timely decision taken by the Modi government helped control the pandemic. The poor got free ration, which would not have been possible in the RJD government,” he said. Yogi said that during the pandemic when scores of youth from Bihar were passing through UP, the state government treated them well and arranged buses for them to reach their home state.