Finance Minister Suresh Khanna said on Saturday that the entire credit for UP’s top ranking in the latest Index for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) released by NITI Aayog goes only to the Yogi government.
Reacting to the SDG figures, Khanna said that it bore testimony to the state’s march on the path of sustainable development led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Taking a dig at the previous regimes of Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the minister added that development of the state had been been caught in the quagmire of corruption for years and the Yogi government after assuming office first cleared the mess created by the previous governments to make a new beginning.
“The Yogi government not only made a fresh beginning in terms of measures aimed at achieving sustainable development of the state, but also ensured that development was fast during its tenure. It is no flash in the pan but was done with immaculate planning and for that a marathon 36-hour debate was organised in UP Assembly followed by formation of committees and sub-committees to ensure systematic development. But sadly the opposition parties stayed away from that. Providing clean, affordable energy for the state has been the Yogi government’s major achievement,” he remarked.
Khanna said that development of the state had come to a complete halt during the Akhilesh government as the state government machinery was immersed in corruption and was busy in development of a single family. “So, the first thing that the Yogi government did was to clean the system to bring the state on the path of development. This was followed by achievements by the government year after year in terms of development. As a result of the policies, today UP has topped in ensuring access to affordable and sustainable energy. The state has retained the top spot among states this year in attaining the ‘Goal 7’ and has been honoured as an ‘Achiever’, showing an improvement of +37 points in the score for this SDG,” he said.
The finance minister further said that the reason for discomfiture of SP chif Akhilesh Yadav, who has always avoided participating in a discussion on development and other opposition leaders, has been the stunning pace of development of UP under the Yogi government that has been acclaimed nationally. He added that opposition leaders in UP have held the state to ransom all these years because of their dynastic and appeasement politics as well as involvement in corruption. They have also been running away from debates on development even in the House.
It is worth mentioning that the overall score of UP has improved by five points, going up from 42 in 2018 to 55 in 2019 and 60 in 2020-21, as per the latest SDG Index. Uttar Pradesh emerged as the ‘Achiever' and the 'Front-runner' in maximum parameters as the state showed tremendous improvement in its performance in all parameters in a span of just two years. In a significant development, UP has been ranked as one of the best performing states in Goal 8 (decent work and economic growth) with a Feedback score of 50.1 by Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). The state has also registered the steepest decline, close to 17 percent, in desertified areas.