Targeting Samajwadi Party president and former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav in his own parliamentary constituency Azamgarh, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that while JAM for Bharatiya Janata Party was Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar cards and Mobile in hands of all, it was different for the SP as the party’s politics still rotated around Jinnah, Azam Khan and Mukhtar (Ansari).
Shah was reacting against Akhilesh’s statement on Jinnah while addressing a public meeting after laying the foundation stone of a state university in Azamgarh on Saturday.
“I want to give a certificate to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for making Azamgarh, a land of great personalities, free from the mafia as well as machhar (mosquito),” he said, adding that prior to Yogi, Azamgarh as well as the entire region of Purvanchal (eastern UP) was suffering a lot from the dominance of mafia and mosquito menace.
“Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission) has made this region free from mosquitoes due to strong steps taken by the Yogi government, helping the region check various diseases,” the Union home minister said.
Shah reached Azamgarh in the afternoon after his two-day visit to Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where apart from chalking out poll strategy and giving responsibilities to party workers of different levels at a BJP meeting, he also inaugurated the two-day Akhil Bharatiya Rajbhasha Sammelan.
Realising the stronghold of SP in Azamgarh and good population of Rajbhars, a sub-caste of Other Backward Classes (OBC), Shah frequently used the name of their ideal personality, Maharaja Suheldev Rajbhar.
“Throughout his life, Maharaja Suheldev had fought against the invaders but the rival parties had forgotten the teachings of that great personality during their regimes as they always focused to divide the society playing cards of casteism and parivarvad (familialism) apart from adopting the policy of appeasement,” he said, requesting Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to name the university after Maharaja Suheldev.
Since the divorce of relations between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and former UP minister Om Prakash Rajbhar-led Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP), it is the second time when a heavyweight of BJP has used the name of Suheldev for wooing the Rajbhars. Just prior to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the party had organised a Rajbhar Sammelan in Ghazipur which was addressed by Narendra Modi.
“Once Azamgarh had earned the bad image due to mafia and criminals but with the establishment of this ‘Saraswati ka mandir’ (university), now the youth will get higher education to reshape their future bright,” Shah said, highlighting the achievements of the Yogi government.
“A large number of welfare schemes which were launched by Prime Minister Modi were fully implemented in UP due to Yogi’s sincere and honest efforts,” he said. Praising the chief minister for helping the party fulfill all its poll promises, including setting up 10 new universities and 40 medical colleges, Shah quoted the names of all the 10 new universities set up in the state during the last five years.
Praising the Yogi government further, Shah said that in 2017, UP was the sixth biggest economy in the country but now it stood second and the number of unemployment had declined sharply.
The function was also attended by the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, among others.