Lucknow: As the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls enter the third phase of polling on Sunday, ruling BJP leaders attacked the Samajwadi Party and Congress more belligerently. While addressing political rallies or interactive sessions, Union Home Minister and former party president Amit Shah left no stone unturned to make scathing attacks on both the parties on Saturday.
Shah's electoral campaign programmes focused on the districts of central Uttar Pradesh, where the elections will take place in the fourth and fifth phases. Along with the issue of dynastic politics for many years in the largest state to the law and order situation during the erstwhile regime, the home minister left no stones unturned to criticise the non-BJP parties. He stressed that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has ended "corruption and terror from politics" and "politics from the administration". Shah said, "The erstwhile governments of Uttar Pradesh used to be known as the 'government of inauguration' or for laying foundation stones. But when the work will start that only God knows. Once the Yogi Adityanath government came to the power, we had to find out the stones even to re-inaugurate and to start the project work." "Some of the projects are even older than me," he mocked.
Shah, who also had been the UP in charge said, "During 2014, I travelled across the state and found people were suffering from poverty, they did not have electricity connection, gas connection and even toilet at their residences. Local shopkeepers and common people were frightened of extortion and 'dadagiri'. However, people voted us to get rid out of this and we kept our promises."
He also claimed that the ruling saffron party has fulfilled more than 92 per cent of what is mentioned in the election manifesto of the 2017 state elections. While addressing the intellectuals at the capital city, Lucknow, Shah also urged to vote for BJP for another term so that the government can do more developmental work- in education, infrastructure, health, and other sectors. Also, the senior BJP leader claimed that women in Yogi Adityanath's regime feel more secure. Even earlier in the day, while addressing a public rally in adjacent Raebareli, Shah said, "For so many years SP-BSP-Congress took votes in the name of the poor. But apart from Narendra Modi, there has been no other Prime Minister who has worked for the poor. The bua-bhatija (aunt-nephew) government ran for many years in Uttar Pradesh. They did nothing except appeasement, casteism and dynastic politics. Raebareli has been the seat of the Gandhi family. Was there electricity in Rae Bareli before the BJP rule?"
"There are no bahubalis anymore in Uttar Pradesh under Yogi Ji. there is only Bajarangbali in the state," he mentioned during his speech at Unchahar.
Though in central UP the ruling party had won nearly one-third of the total number of seats during the last assembly polls, both the party strategists and senior leaders are not taking any chances. Key constituencies like Mainpuri, Saifai, Kanpur, Pilibhit, Lakhimpur, Lucknow, Raebareili, Phulpur are scheduled to go to the polls in the third fourth and fifth phases, BJP poll managers are busy ironing out the kinks where Akhilesh Yadav-led SP is giving it a very tough fight. On other hand, Samajwadi Party is putting all efforts to regain its lost bastion.
59 seats of 16 districts, including Bundelkhand would go to polls on Sunday. However, in the 2017 assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party bagged most of the seats from it. The ruling party had won 38 seats of the total 59 of the third phase while SP could get only 8. The consolidation of non-Yadav backward voters had been the basis of winning the maximum number of seats for the saffron party.
To counter BJP, Akhilesh has fielded a large number of non-Yadav OBC candidates on the seats of the fourth phase. BSP too is trying to woo Dalit voters on many of the seats including in Etawah, Mainpuri, Ferozabad, Lalitpur, Hamirpur and Etah districts.