‘Govt left people to die during Covid lockdown’

KANPUR: On the second day of his Samajwadi Vijay Rath Yatra in Bundelkhand, Samajwadi Party national president Akhilesh Yadav focused on the issues related to farmers and said they would not face any shortage of fertilisers or DAP when his party formed the government in Uttar Pradesh.

Accusing the BJP of misleading the people, he said the tricks of the ruling party would not work as change was inevitable.

Akhilesh was addressing a rally in Ginnaut Bagh ground of Lalitpur.

SP allies Om Prakash Rajbhar and RS Kushwaha shared the dais with the former chief minister at the rally.

Akhilesh said the SP would do the best to alleviate the problems the people were facing in Bundelkhand. There had been massive damage to the region due to drought in the past, he said, adding that the party workers distributed food packets to people during the lockdown and Lohia Awas (houses) were given when the SP was in power. “You have seen the horror of four-and-a –half years’ misrule in Uttar Pradesh; the people have never been through the kind of pain that they feel now,” he said.

During the first wave of the pandemic, the situation was worse than that during the partition of the country, he said.

“Who can forget the pictures when a lockdown was imposed and our labourer brothers had to come from other places,” Yadav said.

“The BJP government put up barricades and did not allow them to enter the state,” he alleged. “The government left people like orphans to die. Labourer brothers put their lives at risk and had to walk hundreds of kilometres to reach their home on foot,” the former CM added. The migrants were kept in cow shelters, he said, adding had the SP government been in place, none of the workers would have had to walk and they would have been sent to their native places in vehicles.

He said the farmers were compelled to stand in queue for the DAP. “People in Lalitpur will stand in queue to vote to oust this government,” he said, adding, “The farmers are facing huge problems. We will make sure that the farmers harvest two crops in Bundelkhand.”

He said the ruling party always flayed him about pariwarvaad (nepotism). Only those having families could understand the pain of others, he said. He took a dig at the UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, asking the people if he deserved the title of Yogi. A Yogi, he said was someone who understood the pain of others as his own.