Lucknow: Turning the heat on the Samajwadi Party during the 24-hour discussion on “Vision 2047” in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday tore into the Opposition’s PDA slogan, saying it actually stood for “Parivar Development Authority”. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had coined PDA to mean Pichhda (backwards), Dalit, and Alpsankhyak (minorities) — the communities the party says it champions. But Yogi accused the SP of limiting its vision “like a frog in the well,” claiming the party’s focus began and ended with family interests.
“Every Assembly constituency should see development, and welfare schemes must reach everyone without discrimination,” Yogi said. “But you are confined only to your families. Your ‘Parivar Development Authority’ approach is exactly what Swami Vivekananda described as ‘Kupa Manduka’ — the frog in the well. The world is moving forward in competition, but you remain stuck in your family circle.”
In a jibe at Leader of the Opposition Mata Prasad Pandey, also from SP, the CM remarked: “He is experienced. When he speaks on his own, he speaks well. But when influenced by others, he even remembers the rooster.”
Yogi painted a grim picture of pre-2017 Uttar Pradesh — “crime, lawlessness, poverty, migration, children dying due to lack of treatment” — and credited the “double-engine” BJP government with restoring law and order, raising UP’s share in national GDP from 8% to 9.5%, and running schemes without “appeasement or discrimination.”
The SP chief, however, hit back sharply. In a statement, Akhilesh Yadav retorted that Yogi himself was a product of a Parivar Development Authority: “Had his uncle not gone to the mutt, he would never have joined any mutt and become Sanyasi.”