Yogi completes 3 months in office - His 5 big failures

Exactly three months back – on March 19 to be precise – Yogi Adityanath was sworn in as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. In his high-sounding rhetoric, Chief Minister promised ‘Ram Rajya’ in Uttar Pradesh. He declared that law of the land will be restored. He issued warning to criminals to either leave UP or they will be put behind bars. Yogi’s spokesman and Power Minister Srikant Sharma told officers that ‘sarkar badal gayee hai’ (the government has changed), so they should mend their ways.

Has anything actually changed at ground level? No.

The Yogi government has failed to win people’s trust even though BJP had won with a thumping majority. People are still wary of moving out of their houses after dusk. The corruption level is as high as it was during previous regime. It has failed to fulfil the promises it had made to the people. The only change which is visible is government’s penchant for changing names of places.

Here are Five big failures of Yogi government.

• The government has promised to improve law and order. But previous incidents prove that there is no let-up in crime rate. Government report claims that there is three times increase in incidents of rape and incidents of murder have doubled between March-June 2017 and its corresponding period in 2016. Rape and murder in Jewar, killing of two jewellers in Mathura, triple murder case of Sitapur, murder of a trader in Lucknow and loot of over ₹2 crores in Varanasi are nasty reminders that Yogi government has failed in restoring law and order in UP.

• In his first press conference, Power Minister Shrikant Sharma said that district headquarters will get electricity for 24 hours, tehsils for 20 hours and villages for 18 hours. Incidentally, this roster was introduced by previous Akhilesh Yadav Government and it was in place when BJP came to power. In this summer, the claims of the government fell flat. The districts including Bareiily, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Moradabad, Bijnore, Faizabad,Allahabad and even Varanasi did not get 24 hour electricity as promised. The government claimed that it got a rotten system and will take time to improve.

• PWD Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said that all the roads will be made pot-hole free by June 15. He held a press conference on that day to declare that just 63% of the roads have been repaired. He blamed previous BSP and SP governments for BJP not meeting target. He said as previous governments had not repaired roads, the volume of work was too much. This implies that the minister had made announcement without knowing the real fact.

• During election campaign Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that BJP government will waive farmers’ loans in its first cabinet meeting. This promise proves an albatross round Yogi’s neck. The first cabinet meeting was delayed by almost a month and when it happened government announced that ₹36,000 crore loans will be waived. But government did not reveal its blue print as how this will be done. No directives were issued to the bank with the result banks had started issuing recovery notices putting poor farmers in a mire. They are out on streets and will hold Yoga at highways connecting Lucknow on International Yoga Day on June 21 when Prime Minister will be holding Yoga along with 55,000 volunteers at Ram Bai Maidan.

• Another let down is in health sector. Health Minister Sidharth Nath Singh had announced that 3000 shops selling generic medicines will be opened across the state within three months. Doctors would be asked to prescribe medicines by generic names so that people could get cheap medicines. Nothing of the sort has happened so far. Instead, people are struggling to get healthcare and medicines in state run hospitals and dispensaries.