Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on February 22 lashed out at Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) over the law and order situation during the previous SP governments.
Adityanath, addressing a rally in Bahraich, drew a Ramayana parallel and called Samajwadi Party 'dangesh', which translates to a group that carries out riots.
“You must have heard of "Lankesh" (Ravana) in Ramayana, similarly, Samajwadi Party should be called ‘dangesh’,” Adityanath said.
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The UP CM accused SP of shielding terrorists and mafias. "Samajwadi Party shielded mafias and terrorists. Now UP doesn't see riots and curfews. They (SP) imposed curfews, but we take out Kanwar Yatra,” Adityanath said.
This is not the first time when a BJP leader has accused the SP of shielding terrorists and gangsters. The attacks have sharpened ever since the capital punishment handed out to 38 convicts in the Ahmedabad blasts case.
In a similar attack, Prime Minister Modi, while accusing the SP of being sympathetic to terrorists, said he had wondered why the terrorists had opted for bicycles, the election symbol of SP, to plant bombs in the initial blasts in Ahmedabad.
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The ruling BJP faces a keen challenge from Akhilesh Yadav-led SP in Uttar Pradesh. In the last assembly polls, the BJP had secured a win with a three-fourth majority, with firebrand leader Yogi Adityanath being later announced as the chief minister. The SP government could win 47 seats while the Congress party won only seven seats.
As many as 172 of the 403 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly have voted in the first three phases of elections. The remaining seats will vote in four phases till March 7 while the results will be declared on March 10, along with the results of Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Manipur.
As many as 59 constituencies, spread across nine districts, will go to the polls in the fourth round on February 23 of the seven-phased assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
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