Lok Sabha bypolls: Campaign ends in Phulpur, Gkp
GORAKHPUR/ALLAHABAD : Campaigning for Phulpur and Gorakhpur by-polls came to an end on Friday with candidates and supporters from all leading parties -- BJP, Congress and SP-reaching out to voters seeking support in their favour.
In Gorakhpur, over 19 lakh voters will exercise their franchise to elect their MP for the seat, which fell vacant after Yogi Adityanath took over as chief minister. Yogi will also caste his vote in Gorakhpur on March 11. In Phulpur, the seat fell vacant when its MP Keshav Prasad Maurya was made deputy chief minister. Counting of votes will take place on March 14.
ALLAHABAD: Samajwadi Party (SP) chief and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said on Friday parliamentary bypolls in Phulpur and Gorakpur were not simple polls as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had given support to the SP candidates.
Yadav said CM Yogi Adityanath was bitterly critical of them when the BSP extended support to the SP candidates but the results would silence all.
“Everyone will see post declaration of bypoll results as to who is a snake and who the mole,” he said.
Adityanath had recently said the coming together of the SP and the BSP for the Lok Sabha bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur was like a snake and a mole joining hands in the face of adversity
“The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made a long list of promises in 2014 as well as in 2017, which, if I start repeating, the bypolls would be over but the list will not end. However, none of the promises have been fulfilled,” he said.
The government neither exempted loans of farmers due to which they were still committing suicide nor the youths could get the promised 2 crore jobs, he said. Referring to demonetization and GST, Yadav said they only caused trouble to countrymen. “And despite five Union budgets in past five years, nothing was done for the common man,” he said.
He said when his government made expressway or distributed laptops, he never thought that he was a backward, but the BJP after coming to power created the distinction of backward and forward class. “We are seeking vote on the basis of our work, while the BJP is seeking vote in the name of religion and caste. Our work is of forward class; we made expressway in 23 months, the BJP should make the Purvanchal expressway in 22 months to prove itself. If one Yadav is a related to another Yadav then the person (read Nirav Modi) who took away huge amount of bank money too could be related to the people of his surname,” he said. “Our candidate Nagendra Singh Patel is a person from amidst you all but the BJP candidate has been brought from another place,” he said.
Referring to UP CM’s statement that after red flag (read communists) it was now the turn of red caps (read SP) to get displaced. he said they needed to remember that red was also the colour of revolution.
From the stage, objectionable comments were made against CM Yogi by former MLA Vijma Yadav, who allegedly dubbed Yogi as a beggar in Magh Mela and even compared him to a person wearing yellow clothes playing ‘dholak’ while transgenders danced at weddings.