Lucknow: Morning temperatures in UP are between 10-12 degree Celsius these days but children in government schools still do not have the luxury of wearing a sweater to school.
The Yogi Adityanath government – like many others of its promises- has failed to provide sweaters to 1.5 crore-school children who continue to shiver in freezing cold.
“The tenders for purchasing sweaters have been repeatedly cancelled for various reasons but we are rushing with the process”, said a senior official in the basic education department. However, he admitted that it would take around a month to start distribution of sweaters and by then, the worst of winter would be over.
UP minister for basic education, Anupama Jaiswal, has announced rather condescendingly that she would not wear a sweater this winter unless all children got one. The minister now moves around with a Pashmina shawl draped around her.
The sweater story does not stand in isolation and there are a host of other promises that the Yogi government has failed to fulfill.
School bags, books and shoes have also not been distributed in several schools yet. There are no signs of free laptops and one GB data that were promised to students in the manifesto.
Another forgotten promise that the BJP had made in its Lok Sankalp Patra was to resolve the problems of contractual teachers (Shiksha Mitras) within three months of coming to power.
Ten months later, the contractual teachers find their hands empty and get cane- charged each time they try to stage a demonstration in the state capital. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath, after being sworn in in March last year, had promised to make roads free of pot holes by June 15. However, 10 months later, a bumpy ride awaits travellers in UP though the deputy chief minister Keshav Maurya claims that a major part of the work has been completed.
In the power sector, the Yogi government had faced opposition flak for increasing power tariff and failing to improve the power situation.
Mr Shrikant Sharma, power minister, says that the power scenario has vastly improved but the fact is that the improvement is not showing on the electricity poles. As the government moves in different directions, the state information department offers no help in building bridges with journalists. The department has turned into an event management entity of sorts and no efforts are made to establish communication with working journalists.
Staff members of political leaders, persons accused in heinous crime, spokespersons of political parties, contractors, builders and even advocates have been given state accreditation while genuine journalists are being denied the facility on flimsy grounds and, thereby, access to information.
“The problem is that a group of bureaucrats are taking advantage of Yogi Adityanath’s lack of administrative experience. They are trying to distance him from the common man – exactly like what they had done with former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav. Yogi Adityanath is being fed wrong information about the announcements he has made and, on his part, he has not got in touch with ground realities either,”, said a veteran BJP leader.
