Ahead of the urban local body elections in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday announced to launch Urban Employment Guarantee Yojana on the pattern of MNREGA in urban local bodies if the party is voted to power.
The SP president also announced to reward elected representatives of the urban local bodies with ‘Nagar Bharti Samman’.
Asking the voters for ‘BJP hatao, suvidha pao (dislodge BJP, get facilities), Akhilesh said the Samajwadi Party would focus its attention on improving the urban infrastructure. He claimed that they would win most of the mayor seats in UP.
Uttar Pradesh has 17 municipal corporations where the mayoral elections will be held in two phases.
The SP chief accused the BJP of making false claims of the triple-engine government, saying the ruling party has been winning the mayoral elections in big cities for the last over two decades but its leaders indulged in rampant corruption, resulting in overall decay of the urban infrastructure and amenities. He also accused Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath of deliberately raising the issue of law and order and mafia only to hide his failures.
“Whether it’s the killing of Umesh Pal or Atiq Ahmad and his brother, both were killed in police protection and no one else but the UP government is responsible for both the incidents,” the SP chief said.
Taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party over problems in cities, Akhilesh and that the ruling party did nothing to implement the Smart City project, which was aimed at improving urban infrastructure, despite having its own mayors.
Addressing mediapersons, the SP chief said, “All the problems in cities are because of the BJP. These cities have had BJP mayors for the maximum duration but they could still not set up smart cities.”
“The BJP did not make a smart city but opened drains; roads are full of potholes and rampant corruption is there in every city. There have been only scams in the name of smart cities,” he alleged.
He claimed that development work was done only during his tenure as the chief minister.
“The work that is being seen today in Lucknow is that of the SP. Samajwadi government gave the metro to Lucknow,” Akhilesh said.
Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Akhilesh said, “The PM had built a factory to generate electricity from the garbage in Lucknow itself. But electricity was never generated.”
“The UP government ruined the Gomti riverfront along with the Varun river in Varanasi. There is no such road where there is no traffic jam. We believe that the cities should be clean. That’s why we have put forward our issues,” he added.
The first phase of polling will be held on May 4. The municipal corporation seats going to polls, among others, include Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s home constituency Gorakhpur.