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Adityanath thanks Modi for clearing Agra, Kanpur Metro projects

Adityanath thanks Modi for clearing Agra, Kanpur Metro projects

Narendra Modi and Yogi AdityanathLucknow : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for approving the metro rail projects for Agra and Kanpur, officials said.

He said these projects will not only ease congestion but also make commuting easier and environment friendly.

The Union Cabinet in a meeting chaired by Modi approved the Kanpur metro rail project having two corridors which will connect major public nodes and cluster areas of the city.

The length of IIT to Naubasta corridor will be 23.785 km. It would be partly elevated and partly underground. The section has 22 stations — 14 elevated and 8 underground.

The length of Agriculture University to Barra-8 corridor is 8.60 km comprising four elevated and four underground stations. The estimated cost of the project is Rs 11,076.48 crore and the project will be completed in 5 years, officials said.

IIT Kanpur to Naubasta corridor will pass through heart of the city covering several prominent educational institutions, railway and bus stations, including IIT Kanpur, CSJM University, GSYM Medical College, Jhakarkati bus station and Kanpur Central railway station.

The Cabinet also approved Agra metro rail project having two corridors. It would pass through the heart of the city and connect prominent tourist places including Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and Sikandra as well as ISBT, Raja Ki Mandi Railway Station, Medical College, Agra Cant Railway Station, Collectorate, Sanjay Place and surrounding densely populated residential areas.

—IANS

Rs 8,054.5-cr supplementary budget presented in UP Assembly

Rs 8,054.5-cr supplementary budget presented in UP Assembly

 

Yogi Adityanath

Yogi Adityanath

Lucknow : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government on Wednesday presented a Rs 8,054.49-crore second supplementary budget in the state Assembly, of which Rs 3,000 crore has been earmarked for the “Swachh Bharat” project.

 

Besides, the Yogi Adityanath government has set aside Rs 100 crore for the forthcoming Kumbh Mela, which will take place in Allahabad in January. Millions from across the world are likely to participate in the religious congregation.

Rs 800 crore had been earmarked for Kumbh in the first supplementary budget. Over Rs 1,500 crore had been allocated in the budget for the current fiscal for Kumbh-2019.

The state government has also proposed a sum of Rs 300 crore for the ambitious Jewar international airport in Noida and Rs 200 crore for constructing an airport in the temple town of Ayodhya.

The state government has allocated Rs 10 crore for setting up of a medical university to be name after late Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the state capital, while Rs 3,3894 crore has been proposed to be spent for power-related projects in the state.

An official informed that Rs 25 crore has been put for emoluments of Aanganwadi workers, while Rs 48 crore has been earmarked for increased wages of Gram Prahris.

The state government had presented a budget of Rs 4.28 lakh crore for the financial year 2018-19 and in August a supplementary budget of Rs 34.833 crore was presented.

—IANS

Congress trying to avoid debate over AgustaWestland deal: Yogi Adityanath

Congress trying to avoid debate over AgustaWestland deal: Yogi Adityanath

Congress trying to avoid debate over AgustaWestland deal; Yogi AdityanathGuwahati : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday accused the Congress of playing with the country’s security and said that the opposition party is shying away from a debate in Parliament on the AgustaWestland and other defence deals signed during the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime.

Addressing a press conference here, Yoga Adityanath held the Congress responsible for delaying the Rafale deal which was initiated in 2007. “Post Kargil war, the country’s security forces needed modernisation and induction of 4th and 5th generation fighter jets. However, the UPA regime kept the deal on hold from 2007 to 2014, jeopardising the country’s security,” he said.

The UP Chief Minister added that now that the Supreme Court has given a clean chit to the government over the deal, the Congress and its President Rahul Gandhi should apologise to the people of the country for dragging in the issue of the Rafale deal unnecessarily.

He also pointed out that while most of the defence deals signed during the UPA regime had middlemen or agents, the Rafale deal was a deal signed between two governments.

“The Rafale deal is a transparent one signed between two governments. There was no Quattrocchi or Christian Michel involved in the Rafale deal and that was probably the reason why the UPA government kept it on hold till 2014,” Adityanath said.

“The BJP is ready for a debate on any issue in Parliament. However, the Congress is not interested to debate. In a democracy, there cannot be a better place than Parliament to debate on any issue. However, the Congress is shying away from debate as they want to escape from controversies like AgustaWestland and other defence deals signed during their tenure,” he said and demanded the resignation of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi for misleading the people of the country and unnecessarily dragging in the issue.

Asked about the SC judgement regarding the anti-Sikh riots in 1984, the UP Chief Minister said that the Congress has been dividing the country on religious lines since long. “The Congress had its hands stained during the anti-Sikh riots. The truth cannot be hidden,” he added.

—IANS

Slain UP inspector’s family meets Adityanath

Slain UP inspector’s family meets Adityanath

Slain UP inspector's family meets AdityanathLucknow : Family of slain Uttar Pradesh Police Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh, who was killed in Bulandshahr mob violence, met Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday, even as the main conspirator of the mayhem, Bajrang Dal’s Yogesh Raj, continues to evade an arrest.

The meeting was held at the 5, Kalidas Marg residence of the Chief Minister here, where Sunita, the widow and her two sons Shreya and Abhishek were present.

Adityanath told the bereaved family that his government was with them in their hour of tragedy and would always remain by them, an official told IANS.

It was in Monday’s violence that the inspector was killed along with another civilian.

Although the prime accused — Bajrang Dal’s district coordinator — is still at large, the police have arrested four others named by Yogesh Raj in an FIR alleging cow slaughter.

Sarfuddin, Shajid, Asif and Nanhe — who were among the seven accused named for cow slaughter in the First Information Report (FIR), have been arrested, the police said.

The police also had reportedly picked up two minors but were forced to release them after villagers stormed the police station.

There has already been two high-level meetings on the Bulandshahr incident with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. However, there was “no clarity on the line of action” with regards to the arrests of men belonging to the VHP, Bajrang Dal and BJP — named in another FIR, informed sources said.

Two press notes released by the Chief Minister’s Office showed no mention of the lawlessness perpetrated by the Bajrang Dal and their ilk, but speak in detail about how strict action should be taken against people involved in slaughter of cows or running illegal abbatoirs, despite a ban announced on March 17, 2017, days after the Bharatiya Janata Party government was sworn in.

“It is now proved beyond doubt that the police is deliberately not taking any action against the Bajrang Dal leader as they have connections with the BJP” Vaibhav Maheshwari, the state spokesman of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) told IANS.

—IANS

Renaming spree: Erasing Muslim heritage

Renaming spree: Erasing Muslim heritage

Representational Image

Representational Image

By Amulya Ganguli,

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has lived up to his reputation as a Hindutva hawk. There has been no mellowing of his attitude as is common in the cases of other hardliners ascending to the seat of power. Instead, he has taken the opportunity of the authority provided by political power to tell the province and the country that Hindu symbols and signs are of overriding importance.

Hence, the concept of a huge statue of Lord Ram on the banks of the Saryu, whole-hearted support to the Ram temple movement and the erasure of Muslim names of towns.

Starting with the renaming the Mughal Sarai railway junction, familiar to countless travellers, after a person who is little known outside the Hindutva camp — Deen Dayal Upadhyay — the Adityanath government has been energetically engaged in changing the names of other places as well.

These include Allahabad, which has become Prayagraj, Faizabad, now Ayodhya, and Muzaffarnagar, which may soon be called Laxmi Nagar if the government accepts the suggestion to this effect by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Sangeet Som, who had called the Taj Mahal a “blot” on Indian culture.

Encouraged by Adityanath, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani has suggested the name of Karnavati for Ahmedabad. Not to be left behind, the BJP’s ally, the Shiv Sena, has sought a time-frame for renaming Aurangabad and Osmanabad.

Hyderabad, too, is under the Hindutva scanner, for the BJP has said that if it won the assembly elections in Telangana, it will name the city as Bhagyanagar.

Although cities have been renamed in the past — Chennai for Madras, Mumbai for Bombay, Kolkata for Calcutta — the idea was generally to revive an old name such as the association of Madras/Chennai with a 16th century ruler, Chennappa Naicker.

Or to pay homage to a local deity, Mumbadevi, as in the case of Bombay. Or to bring a name phonetically close to the way it is locally pronounced like Kolkata.

But rarely has been a city renamed with the sole purpose of highlighting a Hindu name and snubbing Muslims.

True, the names of roads and localities (such as Clive Street or Connaught Place) associated with the British rulers were changed. But these steps were taken to do away with a colonial connection although the names of “friendly” foreigners were retained, as in the case of the Corbett National Park.

But the saffron brotherhood’s present drive is motivated solely by a desire to erase all signs of Muslim heritage, presumably because of the belief that the community does not — or at least should not — have any place in the country.

Hence, BJP MP Vinay Katiyar’s advice to Muslims living in India to go to Pakistan or Bangladesh.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP apparently hold the view that the Mughals and the Muslim rulers before them as well as their co-religionists today are basically aliens although the Mughals and the others made India their home unlike the British.

Although the RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, argued at a three-day conclave in Delhi that Hindutva is incomplete without Muslims — thereby acknowledging the country’s multi-religious identity, which is the secular camp’s view — Adityanath’s acts show that the case for accommodation is not accepted by the Hindutva hawks.

To them, the replacement of the signs of Muslim presence in the country is an expression of Hindu pride just as the demolition of the Babri masjid in 1992 and the Gujarat riots of 2002 were cited as instances of Hindu “awakening”.

Obviously, multicultural tenets are anathema to the Hindutva brigade as they militate against the “one nation, one people, one culture” ideals of a Hindu rashtra, where the minorities will be second class citizens.

The Hindus-only tunnel-vision of the hardliners ignores the fact that India is the birthplace of four religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism — and the home of the followers of three other faiths — Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, not to mention the animism of the tribals.

Even if the urgency of the present erasing of Muslim signs in the twilight years of Narendra Modi’s government is due to the apprehension in ruling circles that the inadequacies of the government have left it with no option but to play the Hindu card with greater fervour, it is clear that the tactic has only brought to the fore the long-standing anti-minority outlook of the Sangh Parivar.

It is also self-evident that the occasional homilies of the RSS bigwigs in favour of accommodating Muslims and the lectures favouring pluralism given by prominent guest speakers before RSS cadres have little practical effect.

In contrast, the humiliating wiping out of little bits of India’s past with their Muslim associations can only widen the gulf between the Hindus and the country’s largest minority community even if the latter understands the crass political intent of the provocative acts, which have the support of only the BJP and other saffron outfits, and not of the Hindus in general.

As for the political saffronites, it has been a step by step process from the rewriting of history when Murli Manohar Joshi was the human resource development minister in order to present the Middle Ages as a time of constant conflict between Hindus and the “invaders”, to the latest attempt to obliterate the concept of a composite culture or the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (culture), as it is known in Uttar Pradesh.

(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)

—IANS