Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for launching new schemes with fanfare without bothering to see whether the schemes already launched had achieved the desired objectives and goals.
He said that the Bharatiya Janata Party was a master in the art of misleading the people by formulating schemes and making huge publicity for them.
“No one can rival the BJP in making phoney schemes and drawing political capital out of them with huge publicity though these schemes later die a natural death,” Akhilesh Yadav said, adding that the sanitation campaign was confined only to speeches by the Prime Minister and the publicity campaign while no sincere efforts were made by the government for achieving the objective of controlling pollution and ensuring cleanliness.
“During Modi’s previous regime, sanitation scheme was launched with fervour and top leaders of the party were seen holding brooms and sweeping public places. The scheme was later reduced to construction of toilets which were of no use due to the lack of water. Same was the fate of the Smart City project as only display advertisements were splashed across the country, with no benefit reaching the people,” the SP president said here on Saturday.
“After the Swachhata Abhiyan, the Prime Minister has launched a new scheme for providing piped water to every household. This scheme is bound to meet the same fate as the sanitation campaign,” Akhilesh said.
He said under the BJP rule at the Centre and Uttar Pradesh, water and air pollution had reached alarming levels and all the rivers in UP like Ganga and Yamuna were highly polluted.
He said river pollution was causing epidemics in UP and Bihar.
The SP president said the forest cover in the country and in UP was rapidly shrinking and tree plantation drive had been reduced to a ritual.
He said that the Samajwadi Party government had created a record by planting over one crore saplings in a day but the UP government had not made any such effort again.
The SP chief also claimed that his government and renovated large number of ponds and water bodies in Bundelkhand while in the BJP rule, the region was facing the worst water crisis.