Officers Acted Like 'BJP Workers' In UP Urban Body Polls, Alleges Akhilesh Yadav

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Monday alleged that certain officials acted like "BJP workers" in the recent urban body polls in Uttar Pradesh, and said his party will soon provide a list of such officers and demand their dismissal.    

Accusing the BJP of "politicising" the officers, he said in a statement, "A large number of officers are working as BJP workers. These officers interfered (in the civic polls) right from the voter list to counting of votes." The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had swept the mayoral elections winning the posts in all 17 municipal corporations last week. 

Referring to the declaration of results in Mainpuri after a long delay, Yadav said, “Not only Mainpuri and Bewar, there is public anger in the entire Uttar Pradesh over reports of the election results being changed by chief development officers (CDOs) and other officers. Such corrupt officers should be suspended. Along with this, fast track investigation should be done and they should be thrown out of the job. Samajwadi Party will give a list of photos and names of these corrupt officers."

The result of Mainpuri was the last to be declared on Sunday, where BJP candidate Sangeeta Gupta got 27,912 votes and defeated her nearest rival Samajwadi Party's Suman by 5,227 votes. Suman got 22,685 votes.

Mainpuri is considered a bastion of the Samajwadi Party and in the recent bypoll to the Mainpuri parliamentary seat, which was represented by SP founder Mulayam Singh Yadav before his death, Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple Yadav won with a thumping majority. The SP chief also alleged that whenever people raise their voices, the BJP government puts the police in front and false cases are filed.  

He said the BJP adopted all kinds of tactics to defeat the Samajwadi Party. Despite that, the performance of the Samajwadi Party in nagar panchayats and nagar palikas, with the strength of the organisation, has been good as compared to 2017, Yadav said. The SP won 191 councilor seats in municipal corporations, 35 chairperson seats of municipal councils and 79 chairperson seats of city panchayats in the urban body elections.