With the 2022 UP assembly elections inching closer, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav promised that if his party was voted to power in the state, his government would do away with electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the voting process.
Addressing media persons in Lucknow on Friday, the SP chief said, “The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will lose any poll if ballot papers are used during voting. Remove EVMs and make Samajwadi Party form government in the state again. Even an advanced country like America is using ballots.”
This is not the first time Akhilesh Yadav has expressed his apprehensions over the use of EVMs in elections across the country. Last month, he had appealed to the party workers to be alert to EVMs and DMs (district magistrates) and alleged that EVMs and DMs were dishonest in Bihar and got the right answer in Bengal.
“The upcoming UP assembly elections will decide the destiny of democracy in the country. This is a fight to save the country and the Indian Constitution. The path being pursued by the BJP will ruin all sections of society. No one can speak as much lies as the BJP dishes out. Everyone knows that the people of the country are struggling with inflation and unemployment, but it’s not the matter of concern for the BJP,” he said.
Slamming the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh, the SP chief referring to the recent death of Kanpur realtor Manish Gupta who was assaulted by a police team at a Gorakhpur hotel on Monday, said, “When such an incident happened in America, people were up in arms against the government. The post-mortem report of the businessman who was killed in the Gorakhpur incident has come out and exposed the police torture and subsequent cover-up exercise by senior district officials. How will the BJP government hide that Manish Gupta was not killed by the policemen? The district officials of Gorakhpur are lying under government pressure.”
Earlier on Friday, Akhilesh tweeted that the delay in arrest of the policemen in Manish Gupta murder case indicated that the accused police personnel had not absconded; but were being protected by the government.
The SP chief further charged, “What is more, the maximum number of fake encounters and deaths in police custody have happened in Uttar Pradesh under this regime. The National Human Rights Commission has sent most of the notices to the UP government yet the chief minister claims that his government has zero tolerance towards crime. This can never be termed as good law and order."
“Today, people of every class and caste want to remove the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh as it did not provide anything other than deception and deceit. All these inaugurations and laying of foundation stones are hoax. Today Samajwadi Party and voters are ready to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party,” Akhilesh said.