PRAYAGRAJ: Union Minister and BJP leader Smriti Irani on Monday said that the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls was no ordinary elections and it was a fight between values and 'goonda raj'.
Addressing a rally in support of party candidate Harshvardhan Bajpai, she attacked Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav, saying, "We have seen how a chief of a party was pushed on stage by his own son."
Akhilesh Yadav was seen in a video purportedly pushing his father Mulayam Singh Yadav on a stage during a power struggle within the party before the 2017 assembly elections.
"See the difference in values. On one side, senior SP leaders are pushed from stage and on the other, BJP's Harshvardhan Bajpai bows to his father," she said.
This Uttar Pradesh poll is no ordinary elections, "its development versus goonda raj and security versus goonda raj", Irani said.
She also stressed that the BJP government was all about ensuring law and order.
Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma on Monday said the BJP is going to break all its previous victory records in the ongoing assembly polls in the state.
"Today, the wind is blowing in support of the BJP. Many veterans of rival political parties will have their poll deposits forfeited. The opposition which was planning to cross the electoral river on the plank of casteism and communal polarisation has been washed away," Sharma said at an election meeting here.
The wind blowing in favour of the BJP has dashed the hopes of the opposition, he said.
"The BJP government gave facilities to the people, while governments of the opposition parties gave the pain of loot, murder, dacoity, riots and crimes against women. In the past five years, there were no riots in the state," Sharma said.
He added that during the previous governments, "people were forced to undertake exodus" in western Uttar Pradesh, while under the BJP government, action has been initiated against criminals, and the mafia has fled the state.
Lucknow will vote on February 23.