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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  Yogi Adityanath or Akhilesh Yadav: who will claim the Lucknow metro now?
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Yogi Adityanath or Akhilesh Yadav: who will claim the Lucknow metro now?

Both Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and former CM Akhilesh Yadav, who have been vociferously claiming credit for Lucknow metro, were left red faced after it developed a snag on the first day of its run

The much-awaited Lucknow metro was flagged off on 5 September by Union home minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath. Photo: PTIPremium
The much-awaited Lucknow metro was flagged off on 5 September by Union home minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath. Photo: PTI

New Delhi: Vehicles—of all shapes and sizes—are triggering face-offs between Uttar Pradesh’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and the Samajwadi Party (SP). After the bicycle tracks, the Lucknow metro has become the latest bone of contention between the two parties.

The much-awaited Lucknow metro was flagged off on 5 September by Union home minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, where Singh took the customary metro ride and praised the state government for the achievement.

However, former chief minister and Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav didn’t seem happy with the ruling BJP government taking credit for the metro. What ensued was a Twitter war between Adityanath and Yadav, with the former claiming to have completed the project and the latter arguing that there would not have been anything to complete had his government not started work on it.

“This is a gift to you from the central and state government. Work on Phase 1 is complete and we have set a target of March 2019 to complete the second phase of the project," Adityanath said in a video released by the chief minister’s office on Twitter on 3 September.

Quick to react, Akhilesh Yadav tweeted on Monday, “Engine toh pehle hi chal dia tha, dibbey to peechey aanee hi thee (The engine had already started running, bogies had to follow)", along with pictures of metro inauguration while he was the chief minister.

Statements claiming credit for the project, substantiated by before-and-after pictures and videos of the metro rail project, went viral on social media.

However, much to the embarrassment of both the parties, who have been vociferously claiming credit for the project, the metro developed a technical snag on the first day of its commercial run on Wednesday. Who will own up the Lucknow metro now?

Pitched as one of the biggest achievements of the SP government in its election campaign, Akhilesh Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav had flagged off the trial run of Phase-1 of the project in December last year, a month before the state went to polls. However, the party was defeated by the BJP, which won a historic 312 of the 403 assembly seats in the state.

With the 2019 Lok Sabha election ahead of them, both the parties are trying their best to showcase the development work done by them. While the BJP swept the state in the 2014 general election, the 2019 elections will be SP’s chance to revive its fortunes, especially after being reduced to 47 seats in the assembly election in February-March.

In July, the bicycle—the election symbol of the SP—led to a tussle between the BJP and SP, when the BJP-led state government decided to demolish cycle tracks laid during the SP regime, stating traffic congestion as the reason.

Hitting out at the government, Akhilesh Yadav promised compensation of Rs10 lakh to the family of any cyclist killed in a road accident when the SP returns to power.

According to political analysts, tolerance of the other party’s achievements is important in a democracy.

“Development activities should not be seen as a political loss or gain. It is but natural for a party to go out of work with some unfinished work, it is only in the right spirit of democracy for political parties to acknowledge each other’s work," said Lucknow-based political analyst S.K. Dwivedi.

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Published: 07 Sep 2017, 10:29 AM IST
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