Bharatiya Janata Party’s senior leader and a minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet, Sidharth Nath Singh, said that the policy of zero tolerance towards corruption and the decisive action against mafia and criminals by the Uttar Pradesh chief minister had unsettled the Samajwadi Party and the Congress.
“The recent activities of opposition leaders like SP president Akhilesh Yadav and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have shown their true colours and exposed their intent before the people of the state,” Singh said here on Sunday.
He said the action initiated against Mukhtar Ansari had left both these leaders anguished, thus making it apparent that the political DNA of both these parties was more or less the same when it came to criminals and mafia.
Pointing out that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has chosen not to respond to an emotional letter sent to her by Alka Rai, widow of late lawmaker Krishnanand Rai over help to Ansari by the government of Punjab where he is lodged, Singh said, “The fact that Alka Rai’s letter has not been answered shows how hand-in-gloves the Congress government in Punjab and mafiosi are. The world has also seen how brazenly and unabashedly the Punjab government has thrown its lot behind a dreaded, anti-social mafia like Mukhtar Ansari.”
“The Punjab government has gone all out to ensure that the law does not catch up with Mukhtar Ansari. It is twisting laws and doing everything it can to ensure that Ansari is out of reach of the courts where he is wanted to be present in Uttar Pradesh. It would have been prudent on part of Vadra, that being a woman herself, she should have at least responded to the letter by Alka Rai,” Singh said.
“Similarly, Akhilesh Yadav has been raising questions in the past on the war waged by the Yogi Adityanath against criminals and organised mafia and their fiefdom. We can understand the pain and trauma of Yadav with all these actions initiated by the state government,” Singh said.
The state government spokesman further said that the mafia had always been protected and patronised by the Samajwadi Party and its leaders.
“What the Yogi Adityanath’s government is cleaning up is the mess created by the Samajwadi Party and other opposition party governments,” the BJP senior leader added.
He said that many Congress leaders recently shifted allegiance to SP, only showing that they had moved from one room of the house to another as these parties had so much in common.
Singh also underlined that anyone and everyone who was against the law was on the radar of the Yogi Adityanath government. “Be it in the garb of political protests, damaging government and private properties or indulging in arson, all such elements who were permanent fixtures in the corridors of power are in prisons and watching their empires go down like a pack of cards,” he said.
“When the palatial bungalows on forcibly occupied lands were being demolished, such moves should have been rather welcomed by the opposition parties but they are squirming, even as people applaud the all out action against criminals by the Yogi government. The only people who are saddened by these acts of the government are those who have fed these mafia and enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with them for the past many years,” Singh said.