The BJP says its government has been providing subsidised ration to 80 crore poor people in the country and that is their admission of India’s growing poverty, as confirmed by surveys worldwide, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav said here on Saturday. Yadav made the assertion in a news conference at Vedanta Farm House. He was on a visit to Ghaziabad along with his party’s poll partner Rashtriya Lok Dal supremo Jayant Chaudhary in support of their party candidates.

Recalling over the year-long farmer protest against the now-repealed three farm laws, Yadav said farmers kept camping at the Delhi-Ghaziabad border for over a year but the government, instead of sympathising with them, kept on putting up barricades and barbed wires on roads and grafting nails on roads to prevent them from marching to Delhi.

As thousands of migrant workers began returning homes on foot amid the sudden Covid lockdown of the country in March 2020, the Yogi Adityanath government turned a blind eye to their plight and left them to fend for themselves, leading to the death of over 80 migrant workers marching back home, said Yadav.

The people of Uttar Pradesh, including farmers, traders, youths and common men in large have faced too many problems during the BJP government and they are waiting to avenge their problems in the assembly polls, he said.

Recalling the Lakhimpur Kheri violence, RLD chief Chaudhary said a group of farmers protesting the visit of Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra and UP Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya were trampled to death under the wheels of SUVs driven by BJP workers and Mishra’s son.

Chaudhary said the farmers have not forgotten the incident and they will avenge it in the upcoming polls.