Previous govts. reduced eastern UP to poverty, mafia rule, says PM Modi

TIL Desk/National/Sultanpur(UP)/ Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday accused the previous Uttar Pradesh governments of letting poverty and the mafia take over the state’s eastern part, saying the BJP government is now writing a new chapter of development there. Modi was addressing a rally here after the launch of the 341-km Purvanchal Expressway, where he himself landed in a military transport aircraft on a 3.2-km stretch developed as an emergency air strip for the Indian Air Force. 

Development was limited to places where the previous chief ministers had their homes or families, Modi said while not naming the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Party or the Congress which the ruling BJP faces in the assembly polls just months away.The event ended with an air show performed by Mirage, Jaguar, Sukhoi and An-32 aircraft, before the prime minister headed back to Delhi on the C-130 Hercules which had brought him here.

The inauguration of the Rs 22,500-crore six-lane road between Lucknow and Ghazipur followed a slugfest between the Bharatiya Janata Party and Akhilesh Yadav’s SP, which maintained that it was his state government that had begun the project. Hitting out at the rivals, Modi said development under the previous CMs was limited to their native places, but the government now is ensuring that it reaches the eastern as well as the western parts of the state.”The previous governments reduced the vital eastern part of the state to ‘mafiawaad’ and poverty, but the BJP government is now writing a new chapter of development,” he said.