‘Would you drink from Yamuna in UP?’ Akhilesh sticks oar into Yogi–Kejriwal tussle

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Friday, 24 January, took a veiled jibe at Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who slammed AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal for the state of the Yamuna during a campaign for the upcoming polls in Delhi.

Yadav asked if Adityanath could sip water from the Yamuna in his own state in Mathura.

While campaigning for the BJP for the Delhi assembly polls on Thursday, 23 January, Adityanath alleged Kejriwal, the former chief minister of Delhi, has committed a sin by turning the Yamuna into a "dirty drain".

The Uttar Pradesh chief minister, whose cabinet took a dip in the Sangam in Prayagraj on Wednesday, 22 January, asked whether Kejriwal and his ministers could take a bath in the Yamuna. "He should answer if he has any moral courage," Adityanath said.

In a seeming response to his remarks, Yadav wrote a post on X but did not name anyone.

"Before challenging others, people should dare to sip water from the Yamuna which flows through Mathura in their state," the SP chief said in a Hindi post.

In his campaign speech in Delhi's Kirari, Adityanath had said devotees and saints in Mathura–Vrindavan are victims of AAP's "sins", as the Yamuna water reaches Uttar Pradesh as a dirty sewer.

He accused the AAP and Arvind Kejriwal of never cooperating with the central government under the Namami Gange project to ensure the Yamuna's cleanliness.

Yadav's Samajwadi Party and Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party are both constituents of the INDIA bloc, which was formed ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to counter the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).