BJP takes jibe at Uttar Pradesh CM

The BJP on Friday took a jibe at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's statement that industrialists should not judge the state by media reports but rather experience it.

Yadav should not try and hoodwink the intelligent industry captains with his sweet talk, state Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Vijay Bahadur Pathak said while seeking to know which media reports the chief minister was referring to.

"There are good reports that the fledgling information and public relations department 'manages' or the ground stories that paint a sorry picture of the state. Which reports is the CM referring to," Pathak asked.

Law and order, power situation and messy infrastructure were big stumbling blocks that deterred industry from coming to Uttar Pradesh, the BJP leader said.

Asked about claims that memorandums of understanding worth Rs.51,000 crore were signed at an investors conclave in Mumbai on Thursday, Pathak said such "falsehood" had been the hallmark of the three-and-a-half years of the Samajwadi Party (SP) rule in Uttar Pradesh.

"MoUs of several hundred crores were signed in the past business meets at Agra and Ahmedabad also... what happened to them?... even the previous chief minister Mayawati used to tom tom the MoU's which the SP government trashed on coming to power," the BJP leader added.

"It baffles me how the chief minister and his favourite bureaucrats can keep a straight face and talk about development and opportunities in UP when his own father and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has on several occasions questioned governance in the state," Pathak added.