All claims about development fake, says Akhilesh Yadav

LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav attacked both the centre and the state governments for falling GDP and ‘rise in joblessness’.

“The GDP is falling, so are the employment opportunities and all claims about development are false and fake. We distributed free laptops just as we had promised and those laptops have changed lives of several lakhs youth/students. The success of our laptop scheme should be compared with the outcome of BJP’s toilet scheme,” he said in Fatehpur.

Akhilesh, who was on a private visit to Chilli village in Fatehpur, told newspersons on the sidelines of the event, “Under the BJP’s governments, all sections of the society --be it farmers, youth, traders, teachers, or women -- are troubled and distressed. All the government did was changing names-- they changed the names of places and projects like the ambulance or emergency police response system. They changed UP100 to UP112 and are taking credit for the works done by the previous Samajwadi Party government.”

› Look at all the budgets so far. What difference did they make to people’s lives? AKHILESH YADAV, SP chief

“Look at all the budgets so far. What difference did they make to people’s lives? This will continue like this under the BJP government. Gau mata (cow) is being disrespected, they are straying and dying--in accidents and shelters. They fooled the rural folks by their gas cylinder schemes. Because of an increase in piped cooking gas supply in urban areas, they diverted the cylinders to rural areas in the name of a scheme and later increased the prices of those cylinders. Now, those rural folks are not buying cylinders and wondering what would they do with the gas stove they had purchased,” he said.

Akhilesh said demonetisation had a direct link with corruption.