Sultanpur (UP), Nov 16 (PTI) 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.
He said the expressway will serve as the lifeline of eastern UP and give a big push to the economic development of the region and the state.
The politically vital Purvanchal region consists of about 160 of the 403 assembly seats that will go to the polls early next year.
The PM recalled the development projects carried out under the double-engine government the BJP is in power both in Lucknow and at the Centre while trashing the past governments.
In Uttar Pradesh, they only showed dreams industrialisation without bothering about connectivity, Modi claimed. He said factories were thus forced to close down.
“And, in these circumstances, it was unfortunate that both in Delhi and in Lucknow, there was a dominance of the dynasts. For years, this partnership of the dynasts continued to crush the aspirations of UP,” he said in a possible reference to the Congress and the SP.
In an apparent reference to the Congress, he alluded to the removal of a Sultanpur-born leader from the chief minister’s post in the 1980’s. “The courtiers of a family had insulted Shripati Mishra, which people of UP have not forgotten,” he said.
In another attempt at connecting with his audience at the public meeting, Modi began his address in the local Awadhi dialect.
The expressway begins from Chandsarai village on the outskirts of Lucknow and ends at Hadairia village on NH-31 in Ghazipur district.
After the address, the prime minister, Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath were among those who watched the air show put up around the emergency air strip.
A Mirage-2000 was the first to land. Commandos emerged later from the belly of an An-32 plane. Another Mirage, two Jaguars and an Su-30MKI performed touch-and-go manoeuvres on the air strip.
The aircraft also flew in formation and ended the show with a flypast. An announcer identified one of the Sukhoi pilots as a local, Sultanpur man.
