Yogi govt readies to blame Akhilesh for its failures    

As the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh (UP) nears completion of its first 100 days in power, pressure is building on the UP Government to showcase its achievements. However, Chief Minister (CM) Yogi Adityanath has reportedly decided to release a white paper on June 25, not on its achievements but the failures of the previous Akhilesh Yadav governmnent.

This seems a well-calculated strategy of the government to divert people’s attention towards the failures of the Samajwadi Party government. So, when on June 27, the CM brings out the report card of his performance, he can project himself as a martyr, claiming his government failed to fulfil promises because it has inherited a rotten system.

The leaders of the ruling party have already started talking about the ‘rot’ of 15 years, which this BJP government needs to clean up. “We do not have a magic wand. We need at least one year’s time to bring the things back to rails,” government spokesman Siddharth Nath Singh said.

Singh said that on June 25, the CM would release a white paper about the ‘fraud’ of the previous government. “The paper would also speak about financial ‘mismanagement’ and how projects were cleared and passed without proper sanctions. Through this White Paper, the Yogi government will highlight the problems it is facing in carrying out development projects in full throttle,” Singh said.

In fact, this white paper will be the veneer to cover up the BJP government’s failures. When BJP came to power, its leaders called it a ‘badlaw ki sarkar’ (government of change). But in the last three months, it has become `badle ki sarkar’ (government of vengeance).

It has ordered probe into several projects including the dream projects of the Akhilesh Yadav government like the Agra-Lucknow Expressway and the Gomti River Front Development project.

During elections, BJP state president Keshav Prasad Maurya had called the 302-km-long Agra-Lucknow Expressway “highway of corruption”. Engineering consulting group RITES was asked to carry out a primary probe and it found minor technical defects in the first 54-km stretch from Agra towards Lucknow.

The defects were so minor that the BJP government failed to order probe. Instead, the CEO of UPEIDA (Uttar Pradesh Expressway Industrial Development Authority), Avnish Awasthi said no probe will be ordered but corrective steps will be taken.

The BJP government has, however, ordered probe into the acquisition of land for construction of the Agra-Lucknow Expressway. Four FIRs have been lodged in Firozabad.

The government has found some anomalies in the Gomti River Front Development project. This scheme was launched at an initial cost of Rs 647 crore but the cost escalated to Rs 1567 crore. Despite 90 per cent of the money being used, only 60 per cent of the work was completed. The government also ordered a judicial probe, which found that work on a musical fountain started in 2015 while state cabinet approval was taken in 2016.