Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Vice President Radha Mohan Singh on Tuesday, 2 June, applauded the work done by the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government in managing the COVID situation, saying that it has been "unparalleled”.
News agency PTI quoted the minister saying, "This pandemic was beyond everyone's control. Despite this, the chief minister's work was better compared to other states. The work done by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in the pandemic has been unparalleled.”
The party vice president, who is presently in Lucknow along with BJP’s national general secretary of organisation BL Santhosh, had met Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath at his residence on Monday and convened a meeting with Deputy Chief Ministers Dinesh Sharma and Keshav Maurya on Tuesday.
‘A Positive Meeting’
Maurya gave a brief statement after the meeting and said, "Yes, I had a meeting, and it was a positive one. The BJP will win 300 seats in the 2022 Assembly polls," NDTV reported.
The party leader also met state Law Minister Brijesh Pathak, who later informed the press that they deliberated over organisational matters and the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, declining to elaborate.
In April, a "confidential" letter penned by Pathak had surfaced on the social media. The letter castigated state health authorities, highlighting the state of UP’s crumbling healthcare infrastructure as it faced a shortage of medical beds.
Ahead of the Assembly elections in 2022, ministers in the ruling BJP government had held review meetings with several ministers of Yogi Adityanath’s government, over the alleged ill-management of the COVID-19 health emergency.
The meetings acquired further significance as they come amid the backdrop of widespread criticism, including that from the party over Yogi Adityanath’s response to the recent surge in COVID cases. Several party ministers and MLAs have gone public with claims of the UP administration being irresponsive.
Singh, Santosh Quell Claims of COVID Mismanagement
However, on Tuesday, Singh asserted that it was the BJP leaders and workers who provided service to people at the height of the pandemic while the leaders of other parties enjoyed "quarantine", PTI reported.
On the subject of speculated changes in state leadership, Singh said that these claims were "a figment of some person’s imagination.”
He added, "Generally, BJP review meetings take place twice a month, but this time, there was a gap due to COVID-19. At the meeting, the 'seva' work that we had done was reviewed. Apart from this, the party’s preparations for a possible third wave of COVID were also discussed.”
BL Santosh, who was part of the review exercise, took to social media to tackle this perception, saying that the UP government "effectively managed” the ferocious second wave of the virus and tweeted:
In April, a "confidential" letter written by Pathak surfaced on the social media, in which he had lashed out at the state health authorities, complaining that beds for coronavirus patients were falling short and ambulances took hours to arrive in the state capital.
Besides a few BJP lawmakers expressing resentment openly on the COVID-control measures, the main Opposition parties – the SP, the BSP, and the Congress – have slammed the government over the handling of the second surge of the pandemic and are planning to make it a major issue in the state Assembly polls, which are only months away.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)