New Delhi: In a veiled attack at the ruling BJP amid speculations of a rift within the party, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav said “welfare of the people” should be above both government and party organisation.
Yadav’s remarks comes on the back of a speech and a cryptic social media post by Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, which has triggered rumours of an alleged rift between him and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
In a post on X on Friday, Yadav said, “Neither the organisation is big, nor the government. The most important thing is the welfare of the people. In reality, organisation and government are just means. In a democracy, the goal is public service.”
“Those who are embroiled in a fight over the superiority of the means are greedy for power and position, they do not care about the people at all. BJP is power-oriented, not service-oriented!” he said in the post.
In a post by the official handle of Maurya’s office on Wednesday, the deputy CM was quoted as saying, “The organisation is bigger than the government, the pain of the workers is my pain. No one is bigger than the organisation, the workers are the pride.”
The statement is an excerpt from Maurya’s address during the BJP’s working committee meeting in Lucknow on Sunday. The picture of the working committee meeting was also in the background of the post.
This post came a day after Maurya met BJP President JP Nadda in New Delhi amid alleged bitterness between Maurya and Adityanath. However, neither the BJP nor Maurya has made any statement about this meeting so far.
Yadav, addressing party workers gathered at the Dr Lohia Auditorium of the Samajwadi Party’s state headquarters in Lucknow, said, “There is a power struggle going on in the BJP, due to which the administrative system in the state is falling apart.”
“People are wandering in police stations, tehsils and other departments. No work is being done without bribe. People are distressed. Corruption is at its peak,” he is quoted as saying by a party statement.
Yadav said that the BJP was engaged in weakening democracy and the agenda of RSS, its parent organisation. was to impose dictatorship.
“Both the organisations are trying to somehow break the sanctity of democracy by conspiring in the assembly by-elections,” he referring to the upcoming bypolls in the state.
While the SP is alert about “these conspiracies of the BJP”, even the people have made up their mind to defeat the BJP, Yadav said.
Yadav added that the BJP’s “agenda of spreading hatred” is evident from the state government order that requires that owners of hotels, ‘dhabas’ and food carts along the Kanwar Yatra route in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand to display their owners’ names.
The SP chief said the BJP wants to disrupt “harmony and brotherhood at any cost”.
“The Samajwadi Party is committed to social justice, caste census. The BJP cannot stand anywhere in front of the combined strength of the PDA — backward (pichde), Dalit and minorities (alpsankhyakh), women and the poor,” he said.