LUCKNOW: Fears of school children in Uttar Pradesh (UP) came true after Yogi Adityanath's government scrapped 15 public holidays from the annual holiday calendar. The holidays cancelled at the fourth cabinet meeting of Yogi Adityanath government on Tuesday pertain to the birth or death anniversary of eminent personalities.
The cabinet said that while those holidays would be put in the category of restricted holidays for government employees, schools and colleges were asked to organise a special programme to commemorate the occasion of the person concerned.
“Schools have been suggested to organise special programmes on the life and times of those accomplished figures,” cabinet minister and State’s official spokesman, Shrikant Sharma said, while interacting with media persons after the cabinet concluded.
In UP, there are 42 public holidays of which at least 17 are related to birth anniversaries of famous personalities.
While the previous SP and BSP governments made several additions to the list in the last decade, the Yogi government, in a departure from convention, cancelled holidays on Parashuram Jayanti, Chandra Shekhar’s anniversary, Maharishi Kashyap and Maharshi Nishadraj Jayanti , Hazrat Ajmeri Garib Nawaj Urs , Maharana Pratap Jayanti , Vishwakarma Puja, Agrasen Jayanti, Valmiki Jayanti and Chhath puja.
CM Yogi Adityanath, expressing concern over shrinking teaching days owing to the swelling holiday list, had proposed to scrap a few holidays especially the birth and death anniversaries of social leaders.
In yet another step towards fulfilling the promises made in the BJP's Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra, the Yogi cabinet in its fourth cabinet meeting approved the proposal to set a four layered anti-land grabbing task force to free government land from the land mafia’s possession.
While the State government contemplates bringing a white paper on land grabbing in UP, a crackdown will be launched on land grabbers in order to prevent a repeat of incidents like Jawaharbagh.
The four-layered task force will work on the State, district, block and tehsil level. While the officials concerned were asked to prepare a list of land under possession of the mafia, a separate list of mafias will also be prepared for action.
Regular offenders will be identified and police authorities were directed to look into grabbing of private lands.
While conversion of public property into religious sites will be illegal, an online portal ‘jansunwai.inc.up.in’ will be made to handle people’s complaints.
Meanwhile, government departments were asked to make their property details available on the departmental websites.
Moreover, the cabinet also gave the nod to special session of UP Assembly to pass the GST Bill to pave way for the Union government to implement it across the country.
The cabinet also paid tributes to the 25 CRPF men who were slain in Chhattisharh’s Sukma on Monday. Two of the martyred CRPF men were from UP—JP Singh of Etah and Manoj Kumar of Muzaffarnagar.
Condemning the dastardly act, the State cabinet announced financial assistance of Rs 30 lakh each to Singh and Manoj Kumar's families.