Hitting out at the Samajwadi Party for spending hundreds of crores in Saifai festival when Bundelkhand was facing one of its worst droughts, the state unit of Bharatiya Janata Party said that this shows the skewed priority of the state government.
“Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is staying put in Saifai for last few days enjoying the cultural extravaganza in Saifai Mahotsava but he has no time to visit the drought hit areas of Bundelkhand where people are dying of hunger,” BJP spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said here on Monday.
In his daily press briefing he said that what could be more unfortunate that in last two and half months the ruling party has spent few hundred crores – first on celebrating Mulayam Singh’s birthday and almost a month later on Saifai mahotsava. This money could have saved may precious lives and had prevented people to go to other areas in search of their livelihood, Pathak said.
He said that Samajwadi Party always claims that Government has nothing to do with this mahotasava and the show is managed by a trust. “If we take this argument on face vale still the ruling party could had diverted that money for the welfare of drought hit people. This would have sent a message loud and clear that it is actually a farmers’ friendly government but alas it is not the case,” Pathak said.
He said that it is more unfortunate that government has failed to distribute financial relief sent by the centre to the farmers. As per the reports Centre had sent Rs 5112 crore a drought relief and the UP government is yet to distribute around Rs 1,676 crore among the drought hit farmers, he said.
“It is unfortunate that Rs 581.70 crore was still lying with the districts and Rs 1,094.33 crore is in the banks. The district officials are not able to distribute this money among the affected farmers,” he said.
Pathak said the UP government was not at all interested in solving the farmers’ problem hence was not distributing the financial relief. He also took strong exception on delaying in announcing the State Advisory Price for the sugarcane.