After HC raps UP official, BJP tears into Samajwadi govt

Chief Secy Rahul Bhatnagar had filed false affidavit relating to compensation paid to SP legislator

The BJP on Saturday launched a scathing attack on the Samajwadi Party government following a High Court rap on Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary Rahul Bhatnagar for a false affidavit.

BJP state General Secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak said the latest indictment proved that "all rules in the book have been flouted in the five years of the SP regime".

Pathak alleged that the entire government machinery under Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav was out to patronise the corrupt.

The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Friday took a grim view of the "false affidavit" by Bhatnagar that related to a whopping compensation paid by the SP government to Buqqal Nawab, an SP legislator.

Nawab, close to the Yadav clan was paid a compensation of Rs eight crore for a piece of land he claimed as his, which went to the Gomti Riverfront project.

The HC bench of Justice Sudhir Kumar Agarwal and Justice Rakesh Srivastava also asked the Chief Secretary to give a personal affidavit and apprise the court on the names of the guilty officials.

It also asked as to why a case of contempt may not be slapped on him for not complying to its orders.

"Not only this case, in the past too the state government has been indicted by the courts for their acts of commission and omission," Pathak said while alleging that nepotism and doling out large sums from the state coffers to those close to the ruling establishment had become the thumb rule in the past five years.