BJP precipitated the crisis, says Akhilesh

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday hit out at Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for preventing him from going to Prayagraj where he was scheduled to attend a students' union event at Allahabad University and slammed him for the "language being used in the assembly and on the streets." Interacting with media at the party office on Vikramaditya Marg after failing to board a chartered flight, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said the ruling BJP had deliberately precipitated the crisis out of fear that he would further expose the state and the Central governments.

"I had informed the university about my programme in December last year. A letter was sent to the district administration on February 2 as I did not want any inconvenience during the ongoing Kumbh. But I was not informed about the problems that the government is now citing," he said. He accused the government of putting his "house under surveillance, plotting blasts near the event venue in Allahabad and burning down the office of the students union president".

"When all this failed to create apprehension of disruption to law and order, they stopped me to board the Prayagraj-bound flight," he said. Refuting the Chief Minister's charge the SP is a "party of hooligans," Yadav said the Chief Minister should "explain whether I have ever been booked for any crime, or, if I have a bad track record in the books of the Election Commission."

Yadav said as Chief Minister, Adityanath is probably the first person in the country who has got himself exonerated in several criminal cases against him. Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party legislators created a ruckus in the Assembly over the episode involving their party chief. They later marched to the Raj Bhawan.