Lucknow: Amid heated debates and pan-India protests over the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act and the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party’s massive outreach programs to counter the dissent and garner support for the law, the main opposition outfit of Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party, has come up with something different.
The party has decided to reach out to the people to counter the BJP’s narrative around CAA and sensitize them about “real issues”. The outreach programs have been chalked out for each of the 75 districts up to the booth levels, mobilising the entire cadre in the state.
Samajwadi Party’s national secretary and spokesperson Rajeev Rai told FPJ, “We are going to counter BJP’s fake narrative manufactured around Ram temple, CAA and NRC with the real issues affecting the common man and farmers.”
Explaining the party strategy further, Rai says, “While CAA and NCR would be the talking points during these public meetings as we have to dispel the lies spread by the BJP on these crucial matters, our focus would be on the issues directly affecting the masses such as stray cattle menace and late-night power supply in the rural areas. Stray cattle have broken the backbone of rural economy. To make matter worse, farmers have been forced to irrigate the fields in the winter-nights which has thrown their life out of gear.”
Police atrocities, rising crimes especially against women, bad condition of cow-sheds and poorly implemented government schemes would also be discussed in the formal and informal public meetings.
Rai says, “Police officers and district magistrates in Uttar Pradesh have been tasked by the Yogi government to hold CAA support programs at police station level. If the government officers would be engaged in political activities, then administrative works and law and order would surely be affected. People are facing the heat but BJP seeks to divert public attention on the fake issues.”
He adds that as a responsible opposition party, the SP would aggressively raise these issues at every forum in the coming days.