CM Yogi says his Government has given befitting response to the stigmatic question mark on the state’s law and order with action on ground.

By VIRENDRA SINGH RAWAT

LUCKNOW, Jan 8 (The CONNECT) - Yogi Adityanath, who was seen as the ‘surprise’ Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 2017 following Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) stupendous electoral victory, is leading the charge of the saffron outfit ahead of the 2022 state assembly elections with no punches barred.

With the Election Commission of India (ECI) declaring the polls dates on Saturday in New Delhi, the onus of repeating the podium poll performance of the BJP, which scooped 312 of the total 403 UP assembly seats in 2017, is on the shoulder of the monk-turned-politician.

Nonetheless, Yogi, who has graduated from a hard-line Hindutva leader till 2017 to a perceptibly hard taskmaster with a chutzpah to boot, is unrelenting in his public discourse. He exudes confidence of turning the tide in favour of his party.

Among the newest yet wittiest of his pre-poll punchlines is successfully transforming a ‘Prashna (Question) Pradesh’ to ‘Uttar (Answer) Pradesh’.

While speaking at a UP Police function in Lucknow recently, the CM said the stigmatic question mark on the state’s law and order five years back (before he came to power) has now evaporated and now UP has become ‘Uttar’ (answer) Pradesh.

Did the CM anyway had in his mind the ‘ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon' slogan of Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi who has taken up the alleged oppression of women as the campaign plank? Priyanka also referred to the iconic dialogue Mere-Paas-Maas-Hai of Amitabh Bachhhan starrer Deewar and said Mere Pass Behane Hai!

Yogi on his part alleges that the sullying questions, raised nationally and internationally, on UP were not limited to only law and order or women protection domains, but pertained to other sectors as well.

“We had decided in 2017 to reserve 20 percent seats for women in new police recruitments. As a result, the female participation in the police force has gone up and women have zealously participated in these drives and contributed towards improving the law and order of UP,” Yogi observed.

Yogi goes on to explain: “We instituted transparent recruitment of 1,50,000 cops, while augmenting the training infrastructure of the police personnel”. Compared to the training capacity of merely 6,000 recruits earlier, the CM was witnessing the passing out parade of 15,428 recruits at one time on the occasion.

Moreover, the CM is seen recalling various other achievements of his government at different forums, including public meetings, which have played a major role in cultivating a positive image of UP among the people, industry and investors alike.

Slamming the opposition parties, he retorts the state was reckoned for rampant farmers’ suicide, tepid food grain procurement and delayed payments, including sugarcane during the previous regimes.

“We have facilitated payment of more than Rs 1.52 lakh crore to the sugarcane farmers in four and half years, which is more than the combined payment made during the previous two regimes (2007-2017) in UP,” he claimed.

Besides, the state government has claimed to have attracted investment proposals of nearly Rs 4.68 lakh crore by top national and international corporations at the UP Investors Summit in February 2018. A large number of these projects are already underway, while some have been commissioned too.

Besides, a number of expressway projects viz. Purvanchal Expressway, Bundelkhand Expressway, Ganga Expressway, Gorakhpur Link Expressway etc have been undertaken. These projects have a total outlay of nearly Rs 80,000 crore.

UP is also developing a Defence Manufacturing Corridor and Film City to rival the best available infrastructure anywhere in the South Asian region. The Jewar airport in Greater Noida is in the works and is touted to firmly put UP on the global aviation hub circuit spanning both passenger and cargo movement.