LUCKNOW: Reiterating his oft-repeated charge on Yogi Adityanath government of hijacking the credit for development schemes conceived by previous Samajwadi Party government, former CM and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav claimed on Saturday that Purvanchal Expressway was also his brainchild and that he had laid the foundation stone of the same in December 2016, just ahead of 2017 Assembly elections.
Notably, Prime Minister Naredra Modi laid the foundation stone of UP's longest ever 340-km six-lane Purvanchal Expressway in Azamgarh, the Samajwadi Party bastion, on Saturday.
However, the SP chief trained guns at CM Yogi Adityanath for allegedly dropping PM's Parliamentary constituency Varanasi from the project.
"Possibly PM himself does not know that CM has dropped his constituency from the project he is laying today," said SP chief while interacting with media persons in Lucknow on Saturday.
"Moreover, Purvanchal expressway is not BJP's project. It's just their habit of claiming projects done by us," Akhilesh added.
He claimed that his government wanted to extend Lucknow -Agra Expressway to Purvanchal.
"It was Samajwadi Purvanchal Expressway but they removed Samajwadi and now they are laying the foundation stone for the work done by us," said Akhilesh. The SP chief claimed that the present government was deceiving people of the state.
"The CM has bullied PM and got a project re-inaugurated which was already inaugurated during our regime," Akhilesh said adding that the government had enough funds to introduce new development projects instead of taking credit for previous government's projects. Akhilesh also charged the state law enforcement agencies of inaction in a complaint he filed about getting abusive comments on social media.
"They are not taking up my complaints while in similar complaints of BJP leaders, authorities are prompt enough to address the issue and sent the culprits to jail," said the SP chief.