Akhilesh Yadav interview: This is a gathbandhan for the future’

There is nothing special about the BJP. They have only cheated the country. When the BJP came to power, the country was under a debt of Rs 35 lakh crore. In the last five years, it has gone up to Rs 70 lakh crore. Where did this Rs 35 lakh crore go? Who got it? The farmers did not get it, nor the poor, or the youth. On the noteban, they said they will wipe out black money and corruption. Kya shauch-alaya mein paani hai, kya bina paise ke shauchalaya ban gaya (Is there water in the toilet, was it constructed without a bribe)”

In UP, from Day 1, the BJP started with a politics of hate, stoked caste and religious conflict. Can the country’s Prime Minister speak like this? Could anyone imagine that this would also be talked about  - where electricity has reached first, and where later? That there will be accusations that we gave electricity more on Ramzan than on Diwali? Today, the government has all the data, let them see if we provided electricity selectively.

Kya kabristan ki boundary pe politics hogi? Kya pradhan mantri kahenge ki thaane mein ek hi jaati ke log rehte hain (Will we spar on the boundaries of burial grounds now? Can the PM say things like only one caste is represented in the police station)? Arrey, you tell me, in UP, if there is even one DM or SP today who is a Yadav. These people made castes turn on each other and after they formed the government, they said that they would set up a commission to probe how many Yadavs are in government jobs. They found that there weren’t too many, it turned out some other caste was over-represented. That report has still not been made public….

Do you think the election has changed after Pulwama and Balakot?
The BJP has tried hard, but the truth is out ever since they got scared of a jawan (Tej Bahadur Yadav, former BSF jawan, was given the SP ticket from Varanasi, but his nomination was rejected by the EC on technical grounds). What was his fault? That he spoke up on the poor quality of food. I have friends who are officers in the Army, my wife is from an Army background, my father was defence minister. We can’t be nationalists if we ask questions? Is asking for the truth wrong in a democracy?
Shouldn’t the country know, shouldn’t the government tell, how much RDX there was at Pulwama, and how it got here? What was the route? Forget what happened to Pakistan. Just tell us what was the route the RDX took... read more:


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