Adityanath also revisited the issue of encephalitis, which he said had caused widespread fear in eastern Uttar Pradesh for decades.

NEW DELHI: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday attacked the Samajwadi Party, calling it a “gang of dacoits” and accusing its leadership of looting the state exchequer during its tenure.Speaking in Deoria, he said SP president Akhilesh Yadav should apologise to the people of Uttar Pradesh over the alleged financial irregularities linked to the construction of the Jayaprakash Narayan International Centre (JPNIC) in Lucknow.Adityanath made the remarks while laying the foundation stones for 80 development projects worth more than Rs 305 crore in Deoria. He also contrasted the current state government with previous administrations, claiming that Uttar Pradesh had moved away from an image associated with poor governance, insecurity and the influence of criminal networks.“SP means loot and extortion, SP means a gang of dacoits,” Adityanath said.He directly targeted Akhilesh Yadav over the alleged misuse of public funds, saying, “For the loot of the state exchequer that the SP chief committed for his indulgence, he should apologise to the people,” he said, referring to alleged corruption in the construction of the Jayaprakash Narayan International Centre (JPNIC) in Lucknow.

Adityanath says UP has left ‘BIMARU’ image behind

The chief minister said Uttar Pradesh had previously been dominated by what he described as a “parallel government of mafias”. He claimed the situation had changed under his administration, with criminal networks being dismantled and the state’s image improving.“Now UP has a good image. Mafias have been reduced to dust. Those who breach the security of daughters and traders have only two places to go — they are either in jail or in hell,” Adityanath said.He also linked development and governance to the election of “good public representatives”, saying that the state’s progress was a result of the choices made by voters.“When good public representatives are elected, good governments come and the results are also good. This development, prosperity and employment are the result of the hard work of the public representatives whom you elected,” he said.The chief minister said Uttar Pradesh had faced a severe deficit in development and public services before 2017.“Before 2017, there was neither development nor security nor respect in Uttar Pradesh. There was no employment, nor houses, toilets, LPG connections, electricity and roads for the poor. Schools had become centres of cheating,” he said.

CM attacks SP-Congress over encephalitis deaths

Adityanath also revisited the issue of encephalitis, which he said had caused widespread fear in eastern Uttar Pradesh for decades. He identified Deoria, Maharajganj, Gorakhpur, Siddharthnagar, Kushinagar, Sant Kabir Nagar and Basti among the districts that were particularly affected between July 15 and November 15 each year.“This was not a disease; it was the sick mentality of the SP-Congress governments. In 40 years, 50,000 innocent children died, but no chief minister or prime minister from the SP or the Congress came to take stock of the situation,” Adityanath said.

The chief minister also invoked the term ‘BIMARU’, which was coined by demographer Ashish Bose in the mid-1980s to describe Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, then among India’s poorest states.Adityanath said Uttar Pradesh had now moved beyond that description, pointing to improvements in development, security and infrastructure as evidence of the state’s transformation.Agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi, minister of state for rural development Vijay Lakshmi Gautam, and MLAs Shalabh Mani Tripathi and Sabha Kunwar Kushwaha were among those present at the Deoria programme.