Hitting out at the Samajwadi Party, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday said that those who support Mohammad Ali Jinnah are insulting Sardar Patel and are the supporters of Taliban.
The CM launched the attack on the opposition at the ‘Samajik Pratinidhi Sammelan’, organised by BJP to strengthen its ground force ahead of the 2022 assembly elections.
Yogi was addressing a Vaishya (traders) conference here on Sunday, which was organised by senior BJP leader and former MP Naresh Agarwal.
“The opposition parties are politically bankrupt, so they are insulting Sardar Patel, a national hero and glorifying Jinnah, a villain. Nawab of Junagarh and Nizam of Hyderabad were not ready for accession of their princely states. It was the ‘iron man’ Sardar Patel, who made them fall in line,” Yogi said.
“Today those who are supporting Jinnah for power are supporting the Taliban in a way, and these people must be avoided because they can do anything for power. The support for Taliban has already come from Samajwadi Party leaders,” Yogi said, adding: “Supporting the Taliban means insulting women and Lord Buddha. One has to be careful with such people.”
“The BJP has done what it had said. Article 370 from Kashmir was abrogated. Today a grand Ram temple is being built in Ayodhya. At the same time, before 2014, the benefits of the housing scheme were available to only those who were close to people in power, but today a large number of poor are being given houses without any discrimination,” he said.
Lashing out at the Taliban, Yogi said they got punished by God for destroying a statue of Gautam Buddha in Afghanistan 20 years ago when the US dropped bombs on them. The chief minister also stated that Lord Buddha would always be the source of inspiration for humanity and also the centre of devotion.
“You must have seen the scenes when the Taliban destroyed the 2,500-year-old statue of Gautam Buddha in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, 20 years ago. The world saw the barbarism of the Taliban. Buddha never imposed war on the world. He will always be the source of inspiration for humanity and the centre of devotion. But no Indian or anyone supporting peace and harmony anywhere in the world should forget the scenes of his statue being destroyed by the Taliban,” he said.
He added: “You must have seen that just a few days after that, the US dropped bombs there and Talibanis were killed. God punished them for what they did to the statue of Gautam Buddha.”
Remembering Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta Maurya, the CM said, “How is history distorted! History did not call Chandragupta Maurya great, but whom did it call great? The one who lost from him. They call Alexander the great. The nation has been cheated. But historians are silent on it, because if the truth comes out before Indians, the society will stand up once again. When society stands up, the nation stands up too. PM Modi is making this nation stand up today. When we talk of 'Ek Bharat, Shrestha Bharat’, these issues are addressed.”
UP Deputy CMs Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma, BJP state president Swatantra Dev Singh and state general secretary (organisation) Sunil Bansal were among those who attended the conference. Naresh Aggarwal, while welcoming the guests, said that this programme is being organised for proper participation of Vaish community in BJP. He claimed that Vaish Samaj is 100 per cent with BJP. “No party is visible in the fight against BJP in the UP assembly elections, and the BJP will win more than 300 seats,” he said.
“We are confident that the BJP government will solve the problems of the Vaish community,” he added.
However, Agarwal said that the traders are upset due to GST-demonetisation, but they are with PM Modi in the matter of national interest. Traders in the state are around 12 per cent of the population.