Acrimony likely in UP budget session commencing tomorrow

The budget session of the Uttar Pradesh legislature commencing tomorrow may witness acrimonious scenes with a determined opposition planning to corner the state government on the law and order front, especially the Kasganj communual flare up.
The month-long session will commence with a joint sitting of both the Houses.
Besides the address to the joint sitting by Governor Ram Naik tomorrow, the government is scheduled to present the budget for the next fiscal on February 16, the Assembly secretariat said today.
This will be the first full-fledged budget of the Yogi Adityanath government which came to power last year with a thumping majority.

Hitting out at the government, Samajwadi Party spokesman Sunil Singh Sajan said, "No businessman will invest in a state, where there is a problem of law and order. A state whose capital is unsafe, and a state where even the police is not safe, how the business community can feel that they will be safe?"
Sajan, an MLC, also condemned the recent statement of UP MSME minister Satyadev Pachauri that the Kasganj violence was "minor incident".

He said, "The UP government is on backfoot (on Kasganj violence), and it is calling the violence as minor incident. Are they waiting for any major communal violence in the state?"

Pachauri had said on February 3 said that such "minor incidents happen often...everywhere. There is no need to pay much heed" and held the district authorities responsible for the incident.
Sajan said that his party will grill the government on alleged attempts to communalise and vitiate the atmosphere leading to Kasganj-like incidents in the state.
SP leaders are chalking out a plan to seek answers from the government over different issues including the "dismal law and order situation and a sense of insecurity among women", he said.
Congress Legislative Party leader in the UP Assembly Ajay Kumar 'Lallu' said, "We will definitely raise the Kasganj violence issue in both the Houses. The issue of law and order is a big and serious one. The people in the government must be sensitive to such incidents.

"We will be raising all pressing issues connected with the lives of the poor, farmers, youth, unemployed, and also law and order," he said.
"The dismal situation of the potato growers who are forced to dump their produce on the roads, problems of cane growers, fake encounters, Barabanki hooch tragedy, special package for Bundelkhand, dearth of jobs, government's failure to distribute woollen clothes and books to school children and other issues will be raised," he said.
Rebutting the charges leveled by the opposition, UP deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma told PTI, "There are some elements who want to paint a wrong picture of Uttar Pradesh. They very-well know the positive momentum of our development, and its direction. In fact, they are feeling worried seeing the positive pace of our development."

He said that criminals are being searched, and they are encountered.
After the last session of the House witnessed unruly scenes, Assembly Speaker Hriday Narain Dixit had warned that he might consider taking action against the protestors.
"If the members express sudden provocation that can be addressed but if they come with posters, banners and display them in the House as a mark of collective protest in a planned manner, it amounts to showing disrespect to the House," Dixit had said.