Lucknow: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday accused BJP of shielding the ‘big names’ involved in the alleged Ram Temple donation theft.Citing the recent flooding of Sangam city following incessant rains, the former chief minister also alleged that massive corruption had taken place in the utilisation of Rs 1 lakh crore during Maha Kumbh.Akhilesh posted photographs of Prayagraj showing people sitting inside their bedrooms and drawing rooms with knee-deep water flooding their houses. Earlier, he had posted photographs of George Town police station in the district, which was inundated due to widespread waterlogging after the region was lashed by incessant rains since Monday.The district administration had shut schools up to Class 12 because of waterlogging, while Allahabad High Court took suo motu cognisance of the situation and directed the district administration to pump out the water from residential localities on a war footing.The waterlogging is an “overwhelming proof” of how Rs 1 lakh crore was spent in the name of Maha Kumbh for the so-called smart development of Prayagraj, Akhilesh said, citing the photographs he had posted.“Had it been anyone else (other than the BJP), they would have stepped down from the govt for spending Rs 1 lakh crore in the name of development in Prayagraj, where thousands of houses are inundated,” Akhilesh said while addressing party functionaries and cadres at SP headquarters in Lucknow on Thursday.The former UP CM said BJP govt had not taken any serious note of the alleged donation and offering theft at Ram Janmabhoomi Temple in Ayodhya. “The govt has, in fact, worked towards shielding the big names involved in Ramdhan loot. The BJP has shattered people’s faith and patronised those involved in the theft and loot of donations and offerings. The BJP is a party that hatches conspiracies, and only the SP can expose these nefarious designs of the BJP,” he said.SP gives Rs 1 lakh ex gratia to kin of Bhind accident victimsLucknow: On the instructions of Akhilesh Yadav, a party delegation led by Dhauraura MP Anand Bhadauria and Mohanlalganj MP RK Chaudhary met the family members of the eight labourers from Mohammadi in Sitapur who were killed in a road accident in Bhind, Madhya Pradesh, and gave them ex gratia relief of Rs 1 lakh each. The delegation also gave Rs 20,000 to each of the more than 20 labourers who were injured in the accident.“BJP govt was quick to announce that it would give Rs 2 lakh as ex gratia to the kin of each of those killed, but a week after the incident, the money has not been transferred to the family of any of the deceased. Surprisingly, the district administration did not even get the injured hospitalised until our partymen raised the issue on Wednesday evening. Still, quite a few injured are lying unattended at their homes,” Bhadauria said.On August 13, dozens of labourers from Sitapur and the adjoining region were on their way home when the pick-up that they were travelling on collided with a truck. As many as eight labourers from Sitapur were killed and nearly two dozen injured. The victims had gone to MP to work as labourers in the rice fields during the sowing season.
