UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath drew a similarity between Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday, a day after Akhilesh recounted an anecdote of a student mistaking him for the Congress leader.
Adityanath said that there is not much difference between the two leaders — “one berates India during his foreign tours while the other speaks ill about Uttar Pradesh outside the state.”
The CM was speaking during a debate on the budget of 2022-23 in the state assembly on Tuesday. He said that children are innocent and the one whom Yadav had referred to must have said this after some thinking.
“There is not much difference between them (Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav). While one criticises the country abroad, the other flays UP outside the state,” the chief minister said, drawing laughter from the treasury benches.
Leader of Opposition Akhilesh Yadav was present in the House at that time. Deploring the quality of education in Uttar Pradesh, Yadav had on Monday recounted the day he was confused with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi by a child during his visit to a school. The SP supremo had said this while addressing the state assembly during a discussion on the state budget. He was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh from 2012 to 2017.
When the members from the treasury benches laughed at this, Yadav had said, “They are not sad about the level of education in the state, but because I took the name of the Congress leader.”
Gandhi and Yadav had joined hands to take on BJP in the 2017 assembly polls in UP but the alliance turned out to be unsuccessful.
The CM, in his over two-hour speech in the assembly, also rebutted the accusation by the leader of opposition that the BJP government was ignoring the perfume industry of Kannauj
“Your friends in the perfume industry of Kannauj are involved in economic offences. The BJP government has linked the perfume industry to the ODOP and 55 new units have been set up in the last five years while the annual turnover is now over Rs 800 crore. The export is also worth USD 2.67 million,” he said.
Yogi said that the Samajwadi Party had made many announcements for the perfume industry which were being implemented by the BJP government.
The CM also pointed out that the SP had poked fun at the ODOP. “The ODOP is for preserving our heritage. Each particular area has its own distinct heritage in the form of art and craft, and the perfume industry is one of those,” he said. He added that UP has the maximum number of GI products in the country and the PM, during his recent visit to Japan, had gifted an ODOP product from Mathura to his counterpart there.
The CM listed the details of works done by his government in the last five years and also the projects to be taken up during the current fiscal. The works include Sustainable Development Goals, One District, One Medical College, Smart City project, power generation, transmission and distribution, and Namami Gange.
The CM said that the total power transmission capacity in UP in 2017 was 16,348 MW, which has now increased to 28,000 MW.
About the agriculture sector, the CM said that during the last five years, the state government has ensured payment of over Rs 1,74 lakh crore to sugarcane farmers and over Rs 70,000 crore to the farmers for wheat and paddy purchased from them under the Minimum Support Price (MSP) scheme.