Continuing with his campaign for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Chief Minister Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will tour western Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday.
He is visiting Badaun and Shajapur.
On Wednesday he will tour Mathura and Agra in the Braj region.
On Monday, he campaigned in Kairana and Rampur. The themes of the CM’s campaign are clear: his “tough” handling of law and order, the “development” that the state has purportedly seen under him, the low coronavirus numbers in the state at present – which make him claim credit for the state having negligible numbers of fresh cases at present – and a dash of Hindutva, something that has been associated with him for long.
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There has been action against 147 elements belonging to the land mafia in your district, Adityanath told a well-attended rally at Rampur in Ruhelkhand region on Monday, even as he inaugurated 20 development schemes that would entail a cost of Rs. 64 crore.
Packed crowds thronged rally venues at both Rampur and Kairana in western Uttar Pradesh, as Adityanath, clad in his trademark saffron robes, intensified his campaign in a part of the state opposite to his own hub, Gorakhpur.
Both in rallies and over twitter, Adityanath is leaving no stone unturned to retain India’s most populous state, where Akhilesh Yadav of Samajwadi Party is being seen as his main rival. The opposition is divided: Mayawati’s BSP, which has trained its guns on Yadav for poaching party leaders, and Priyanka Gandhi of the Congress are trying to make it a multi-cornered contest.
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Taking to twitter, Adityanath patted the UP government on the back for the state having climbed seven spots in the Leads Report 2021 of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry – the report tracks logistics development – from the 13th to the sixth position among states.
At one of his rallies on Monday, he congratulated the state government for what he claimed was its “excellent” handling of the coronavirus pandemic: free treatment and high vaccination figures. While UP had seen a severe second wave of the pandemic, numbers of fresh infections are very low at six, and the total number of active cases stands at 85.
The Chief Minister also attacked his political rivals, claiming that they went into hiding at home when the coronavirus wave struck, not helping even their own party workers.
A recurrent theme in Adityanath’s speeches has been what he claims to his strong handling of law and order, something that critics claim are signs of a police state.
However, Adityanath played this theme to the hilt at Kairana, where the foundation stone of the building that would house the office of the Provincial Armed Constabulary was laid. “When PAC will use its baton, big rioters will be seen travelling to the other world. They can no longer create chaos here,” he said amid cheers. “Kairana used to a centre of Hindustani classical music and a centre of trade in west UP. Those who tried to destroy it have suffered and will suffer – let there be no doubts about this.”
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He wove this law and order theme into a larger Hindutva theme, when he referred to reports of the “exodus” of Hindus from Kairana a few years back and also made a reference to the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013.
“Those who considered vote bank as important honoured the rioters. When two young men were killed in Muzaffarnagar, those who talk about caste politics did not talk of their caste,” Adityanath said, tacitly reaching out to Jats, who are seen on the forefront of the farmers’ agitation in west UP.
Adityanath also took a dig at opposition leaders who, he claimed, were trying to ‘show off’ their Hindu credentials: “Modi ji has turned the wheel of Dharma in such a manner that those who would hesitate to visit a temple are now sporting such a large Tilak as if they alone are Hindus.”
