Akhilesh jibes at Yogi over waterlogging in Gorakhpur

LUCKNOW : Samajwadi Party (SP) national president Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday invoked and tweaked a famous Gujarat tourism tagline to attack Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath over waterlogging in Gorakhpur soon after Yogi reached there on a visit.

Akhilesh made the attack on Twitter. He first shared on social media pictures showing waterlogged stretches at Rapti complex, a bus station in Rapti Nagar and at the power corporation’s executive engineer’s office at Rapti Nagar following Wednesday rain. “Decorated with the lakes of development under the BJP rule…this is the BJP’s pond of corruption -- ‘Jal Nagar’ Gorakhpur. The Gorakhpur tourism is inviting you saying: Kuchh din to tairiye Gorakhpur mein. (Swim in Gorakhpur for a few days),” he tweeted with the pictures.

His obvious reference was to the BJP-ruled Gujarat’s famous tourism tagline of “Kuchh din to Gujaro Gujarat mein” (spend some days in Gujarat). Gorakhpur is considered CM Yogi’s home district from where he has been an MP five times and is now an MLA from a Gorakhpur assembly constituency.

In a statement his party issued, Akhilesh Yadav said the very first monsoon showers had exposed the truth about development claims in the BJP rule in the state. He also said even the PM’s parliamentary constituency Varanasi has people distressed over waterlogging. He said that in the urban areas of Varanasi, water-logging troubled people for hours. “There is kneedeep water at the Dashashwamedh Ghat developed as a pink corridor. There was water-logging from Gudaulia to Dashashwamedh Ghat,” he said.