1,000 Children Died in Gorakhpur in Past 12 Months: Akhilesh Yadav
Image Courtesy: News24
Lucknow: Amid a political storm over infant deaths in Kota, Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Friday alleged that over 1,000 children had died in the past 12 months in Gorakhpur and asked the Uttar Pradesh government who was responsible for it.
Training his guns on the UP Chief Minister, Yadav said "Yogi Adityanath is worried about Kota deaths. When will he be worried about the Gorakhpur deaths".
Yadav told a press conference here that the ailing children in Gorakhpur were suffering from encephalitis but were administered different medicines so that the truth did not come out that they were dying of encephalitis.
"I will soon release a list of the dead children," he said.
"Why were wrong medicines administered? Who is answerable?" he asked.
The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister had on Thursday targeted the Congress over infant deaths in Rajasthan, saying party leader Priyanka Gandhi should have gone there to console the children's mothers instead of "playing politics" in UP.
At least 100 infants have died at a government-run hospital in Kota in the past month.
On Uttar Pradesh BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh's remark that the SP chief should stay in Pakistan for a month to understand atrocities being faced by Hindus there, Yadav said the saffron party has made this suggestion as it does not want any discussion on unemployment.
Yadav also said very soon SP workers would take out rallies all over the state against the National Population Register (NPR), noting that it would do no good to the people.
"Nahi chahiye NPR, humey chahiye rozgar (We don't need NPR, we need employment) will be our slogan," he said.
The SP chief's remarks came against the backdrop of the Union Cabinet approving nearly Rs 4,500 crore for updating the NPR.
He accused the BJP of being silent on economic issues, rising prices of essential commodities, higher cost of cooking gas cylinders and costlier electricity, he said.
Referring to the recent clashes in Uttar Pradesh, the SP chief claimed that all the deaths during the anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protests were during police firing.
"All the deaths were caused by police bullets," he claimed.
Officials have maintained the death toll at 19, with some of the casualties in police firing which took place in "self-defence".
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