Ghaziabad: Days before the assembly bypolls, chief minister Yogi Adityanath attacked the opposition Samajwadi Party as "anti-youth, anti-farmers and anti-traders". Addressing BJP workers ahead of the Nov 20 bypolls to the seat, necessitated as Atul Garg was elected to the Lok Sabha, the CM said it was best to keep a good distance from the SP.
"Jitni duri rakheinge SP se, utna hi kalyan hoga," he said at an event at Saraswati Vidya Mandir in Nehru Nagar to drum up support for BJP's candidate Sanjeev Sharma from the seat.
In his 20-minute address, Yogi listed the achievements of the "double-engine" govt — among them the Ram temple in Ayodhya — even as he criticised the opposition for being anti-development.
"The double-engine government has struck a balance of tradition and development. Who would have thought that one day a Ram temple would come up in Ayodhya?... The policies of our govt are pro-people—be it the Ujjwala Scheme, affordable housing, and even public toilets—it doesn't differentiate, but we do not resort to appeasement of a certain section. The benefits of our policies are for all to avail," he said.
"SP, on the other hand, is not only anti-development. For them, development means personal development, family development and the development of the Saifai clan," he said. Yogi also attacked the Akhilesh Yadav-led party for "playing with the safety and security of the general public and women".
The byelection is set to be a direct contest between BJP's Sharma and SP's Singhraj Jatav. The other contenders for the seat are BSP's Parmanand Garg, AIMIM's Ravi Kumar and Satpal Choudhary of Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram). Yogi also attended election-related programmes in the poll-bound western UP assembly segments of Kundarki in Moradabad and Meerapur in Muzaffarnagar.