Opposition parties in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday boycotted the Yogi Adityanath government’s 36-hour special session of the Assembly on Mahatma Gandhi’s 150 birth anniversary and held their alternative events to mark the occasion.
Taking a dig at the BJP, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who led a pada yatra in Lucknow, advised the party to “first walk the path of truth before talking of Gandhiji.”
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav marked the occasion by first garlanding Gandhiji’s statue at Hazratganj where his party leaders and MLAs sat down to sing Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite hymns.
Akhilesh’s charge
Mr. Yadav said his party abstained from the special session of the Assembly arguing that while the BJP wanted to appropriate Gandhiji, their ideals were far from his values.
“The BJP and people associated with the BJP ideology have never walked the path of father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi. [They have] never adopted the path of truth,” Mr. Yadav told reporters.
Mr. Yadav said it was odd that “a party whose people believe in violence” and who have not imbibed Gandhiji’s values in their lives, were celebrating Gandhi Jayanti.
BSP chief Mayawati said the BJP had convened a special session on the day not to highlight the life of Gandhiji but to “hide its own failures.” The BSP MLAs would rather spend the day helping those affected by the floods, she said in a statement.
Mr. Adityanath, speaking in the House, said the Opposition parties boycotting the session amounted to “an insult of the common people” and compared them to Duryodhana, a character in the epic Mahabharata.
Targets Cong.
Targetting the Congress for not attending the session, Mr. Adityanath said, “there could be no greater insult” to Gandhiji by the party that ruled in his name for the most number of years.
“While we talk of swadeshi, they talk of foreign. We talk of nationalism, they talk of terrorism,” he said.
The Chief Minister also attacked the SP and the BSP, saying development was not in their nature and that the two parties couldn’t separate themselves from dynasty politics and casteism.
