Express News Service
LUCKNOW: Reiterating his government’s policy of ‘zero tolerance’ towards crime and criminals, UP CM Yogi Adityanath, on Tuesday, reminded the main opposition Samajwadi Party of the statement once given by party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav with reference to a rape case and said that in the present dispensation “boys are not allowed to make mistakes.”
The CM was responding to Leader of Opposition Akhilesh Yadav’s onslaught over the prevailing law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh on the floor of the Legislative Assembly. Amid sharp exchanges between the two leaders, CM Yogi reassured the house of the consecution of the crackdown on criminals saying: “Whoever is the culprit and whatever is the type of crime, it is unforgivable in the eyes of the state government.”
“It is the BJP-led government and we do not believe in the philosophy that ‘boys often commit mistakes’,” the CM said mockingly in Vidhan Sabha.
Back in 2014, the then Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav had referred to a rape case in Mumbai saying, “it is natural for boys to err at times and it is wrong to give them the death penalty.”
Reminding the opposition of UP’s law and order situation before 2017, the CM accused the SP of playing patron to criminals. “Samajwadi Party played a patron to criminals pushing the state into anarchy and hooliganism. Today, the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh is an example in itself,” he claimed while responding to the SP chief’s tirade, especially, on crime against women with reference to recent incidents in Chandauli, Lalitpur, Siddharthnagar and Prayagraj.
Earlier, the Leader of Opposition said it was difficult to fathom that the cops, in a state which claimed to have a policy of zero tolerance towards crime, could hang the body of a girl to make it a case of suicide after thrashing her to death in Chandauli.
He asked the CM to respond to his posers and put forward the policy to stop crime against women in the state.
While responding to the issues raised by Akhilesh Yadav, CM Yogi claimed that the state government was very sensitive to the crime against women while underlining the steps taken to stem it by bringing the culprits to books and taking the strictest action against them to ensure justice to the victims.
The CM also sought to compare the state of communal flare-ups in the present regime with the SP rule. “Between 2012 to 2017, Uttar Pradesh witnessed over 700 major communal riots across the districts. Curfew was imposed in districts like Muzaffarnagar, Lucknow and Bareilly for several months. There was no district where there was no riot,” he said adding that since 2017, when the BJP government came to power, there had not been a single communal flare-up in the state.
“Moreover, after the formation of the new government, there were communal riots in seven states on Ram Navami, but not a single one in UP. Perhaps for the first time, the namaz of Alvida was not offered on the streets. There was no chaos on the occasion of Eid as well. All the festivals were celebrated in a peaceful atmosphere,” he added.
The CM attributed the poll success of 2022 to a better law and order environment created in the state during the last five years. “The truth neither needs a proof nor it can be hidden and the number of MLAs in the house is a reflection of it,” the CM asserted.
Expressing his gratitude to religious leaders, CM Yogi claimed that previous state governments lacked the will to create a peaceful environment for every citizen without discriminating on the basis of caste and religion. He claimed that through the communication with spiritual and religious leaders, he got support from all sections to stop the unnecessary usage of about 1 lakh loudspeakers across the state without any ill will and without appeasement of any particular community.