CM: Rivals made Gkp a picnic spot
Lashing out at rivals for politicising the BRD hospital tragedy, chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday said Gorakhpur has become a picnic spot for many.
Attacking Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, the CM said, “Yuvraj sitting in Delhi and Shahzada in Lucknow can’t understand the importance of cleanliness drive launched by the government.”
“For them, Gorakhpur is a picnic spot,” he said without naming Akhikesh and Rahul.
He was here to launch the ‘Clean UP Healthy UP’ sanitation drive from a Dalit slum at Andheyari Bagh locality in his home city Gorakhpur.
Incidentally, Rahul was on his way to Gorakhpur to meet the families of children who died at BRD hospital, when Yogi attacked the duo.
Akhilesh had announced a financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh to the kin of deceased from the party fund when he visited Gorakhpur on August 14.
“I think we should not give permission to anyone to make a picnic trip to Gorakhpur,” he said while insisting that had the previous UP government joined the Swachch Bharat Mission launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi the tragedy could have been avoided.
“The drive is actually a massive campaign to check deaths caused due to vector and waterborne diseases, especially in east UP,” he said.
Facing criticism for the deaths of dozens of children at BRD Medical College, the state government has launched sanitation drive between August 19 and 25, on the lines of Swachch Bharat Mission initiated by the Prime Minister in August 2014.
Yogi, who also garlanded the statue of Dalit icon Bhim Rao Ambedkar, claimed that as Gorakhpur MP he had been fighting for encephalitis-affected children since 20 years and even appealed the previous governments to undertake sanitation drive on a wide scale.
“But the insensitive governments involved in corrupt practices didn’t pay heed to my demands,” he said while passing the buck on to the Akhilesh Yadav government for the tragedy. “Vectorborne JE and waterborne AES are two viruses responsible for the death of children and more than cure, prevention is needed to tackle them effectively,” he said.
Announcing that the sanitation drive has been launched in 38 districts, he said over 93 lakh children have already been vaccinated and the drive has started giving good results.
He said while JE had been controlled through vaccination, there was a need to check the spread of AES by ensuring access to potable drinking water to everyone and making every district and every village open-defecation-free (ODF).
He claimed that in last four months as many as 1,627 villages along Ganga banks in Varanasi had been declared free from open defecation.
By 31st December, 30 more districts will be made ODF, he added
Exhorting people to contribute voluntarily to sanitation campaign, the CM said it was not only the government’s responsibility to carry out sanitation. “More and more people will have to join such drives to ensure cleanliness,” he said.