The Uttar Pradesh Congress flayed the brutal lathicharge on children in Sonebhadra and charged that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had lost the moral right to remain in office.
The children were protesting against poor quality of the mid-day meals served to them in their school and wanted to bring the anomaly to the Chief Minister's attention during his visit to the district on Wednesday, after which the police cane-charged them.
"Is it a crime or treason or any subversive activity to register one's ire before the Chief Minister over poor quality of mid-day meal at a primary school that the police mercilessly beat up the students and prevented them from coming before the Chief Minister?" asked UP Congress spokesman Omkar Singh.
He said the administration could have convinced the kids after redressing their problems instead of using cane.
"Yogi Adityanath has lost the moral right to remain Chief Minister after overlooking such insensitivity of the administration. Both the Centre and state government have snatched the rights of citizens to even peacefully protest against misgovernance," Singh said.
"Lucknow University students have still not forgotten how they were assaulted and later lodged in jail after rustication for mustering courage to wave black flags at Yogi for not holding university students' union elections. In fact, there is a state of undeclared emergency across the country," Singh added.
The UP Congress spokesman also highlighted the poor condition of government schools and poor quality mid-day meal served to students.
"The Bharatiya Janata Party government has no time to look into the welfare of citizens and it is only making false promises to win elections," he said.
Singh also highlighted the death of a pregnant woman in Hardoi, who died for want of treatment as she did not have an Aadhaar card. "The incident only exposes how insensitive the medical staff has became in Yogi raj," he charged.
"Medical service in the state has been paralysed with the deaths of 300 children in Bareilly division in the last one month. This includes 114 causalities in Bareilly district itself," Singh said.