PM Narendra Modi attacks Akhilesh Yadav at Kabir anniversary

Maghar, Uttar Pradesh June 28: The Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched a scathing attack on Samajwadi President Akhilesh Yadav. “There was a government which was keener to hold back its bungalow. Today, minds of leaders are occupied by thoughts of materialistic things, bungalows instead of understanding Kabir and following his message of love and care,” Modi said at an event to mark the birth anniversary on Saint Kabir Das.

He further attacked previous governments in the state and said that the work for housing was stopped during the previous regime. “The ‘Bungalow government’ stalled the housing projects for poor people for years but when Yogi government came to power it took solid action and provided record number of houses to the poor,” Modi said in Maghar.

He further invoked Emergency and said that greed of power has united ‘those who imposed and those who opposed Emergency’. “Two days ago, there was 43rd anniversary of Emergency. It is the greed for power that those who imposed and those who opposed Emergency have come together today,” Modi said. “They don’t see the welfare of society but only the welfare of themselves and their families,” he added.

Modi said that some parties in Uttar Pradesh don’t want peace and development. “There are some parties which do not want peace and development but unrest. They think if there will be unrest, they will be politically benefitted,” he said, adding such people are cut off from their roots and ‘they don’t know the nature of this nation of Sant Kabir, Mahatma Gandhi and Baba Ambedkar’.

 Yogi Adityanath declines to wear skull cap:

Meanwhile, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, often referred as a firebrand Hindutva leader, has landed in a soup for refusing to wear a skull cap at Kabir’s mausoleum in Maghar.

The UP CM had arrived in the town on Wednesday to take stock of preparation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Thursday visit. When he visited the Kabir mausoleum, where PM Modi today offered floral tributes, the Khadim Hussain moved to place the cap on the Chief Minister’s head, Adityanath politely declined.

“Stop stop… it is done,” Yogi told the caretaker, however agreeing to hold the cap in his hand as he posed for photographers.

CM Adityanath’s refusal, however, has given the Opposition an opportunity to flay his action. Several leaders have alleged this was an example of his policies and dividing of society on religious lines. Samajwadi Party spokesperson Sunil Sajan said that it was a cap of Kabir but CM must have misunderstood it. “…heights of hypocrisy it is, such people should not go the Kabir dhaam.”

Congress leader Pramod Tiwari said that the cap doesn’t belong to any particular religion and it is just to show a gesture of respect. “A CM has to take everyone together. If someone is offering you a cap, pag, it is just a gesture to show respect. People occupying top offices have to take

Meanwhile, the lone Muslim minister in the UP Cabinet Mohsin Raza has come up in the CM’s defense and questioned the intention behind offering caps to leaders. He suggested that religious gurus should restrain from indulging in such acts.

“By offering him a cap and when he refuses to wear it, what message you are trying to send? I am Muslim but I never wear a cap. Does this mean I am not a Muslim? Has he (Yogi Adityanath) committed a crime by doing so? Who told you to make him wear a cap? Why don’t you go to a temple, stand with people there, congratulate them? Change your thought,” he averred.

A day earlier, the head of Kabir mutt in Maghar took a strong objection to PM Modi’s visit, claiming that his consent was not been taken by the local organizers nor he has been invited to the event.

Expressing his objection, Varanasi’s Kabirchaura Moolgadi mahant Sant Vivekdas Acharya said, “I wonder why and how the jayanti celebration is being held at the place of nirvana, and that too without my knowledge. It is a common practice to take consent of the owner of the place for holding any programme, but the organizers did not bother even to inform me.”