Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath congratulated Bharatiya Janata Party-backed Samajwadi Party candidate Nitin Agarwal on his victory for the post of deputy Speaker of the State Assembly, dubbing it as a picture of the 2022 assembly election results.
Yogi Adityanath also targeted the SP for its dynastic politics and its refusal to accept one of its own MLA as the deputy speaker.
The chief minister, in his address in the assembly after Nitin Agarwal was declared elected as deputy speaker on Monday, said the result had exposed the fallacy of the opposition unity.
“The opposition, including SP, could not show unity even in the election of the deputy speaker and this result is a clear indication of the result of the 2022 UP assembly elections,” he said.
Yogi Adityanath also expressed sympathy for SP candidate Narendra Singh Verma who polled only 60 votes. “Had the SP made him a candidate four years ago, he could have possibly won,” he pointed out.
Taking a jibe at SP’s failure as the largest Opposition party, the chief minister said the BJP waited for a full four-and-a-half years but the SP did not put forward any names for the deputy speaker’s post. He said finally, in view of the last six months of the House remaining, the BJP took steps towards fulfilling this tradition.
Expressing happiness over getting a young, energetic and experienced deputy speaker Nitin Agarwal, Yogi Adityanath said that “technically” Nitin was also a member of SP and thus the BJP had followed the tradition of the House.
Talking about the defeat of the SP in the 2022 assembly elections, the chief minister also exhorted the SP to rise above ‘parivarvad’ (dynastic politics). “For SP, the family is the State, whereas for the BJP, the entire state is a family,” the chief minister asserted.
Commenting on the heated argument between leader of opposition Ram Govind Chaudhary and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Suresh Khanna before the voting, the chief minister said “Chaudhary is a gentleman who believes in dialogue but does not have the strength to bear the party contradictions that is why unnecessary arguments take place in the House”.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also referred to the 36-hour special session of UP assembly on Sustainable Development Goal held on the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi in 2020 and said that when topics like poverty, illiteracy, women’s uplift, youth welfare were discussed, the SP boycotted the session. The chief minister thanked all the members who participated in the discussion on many topics of public importance in the state legislature in the last four-and-a-half years.
Meanwhile, the state assembly was adjourned sine die after the day-long special session on Monday.
