UP CM deflects opposition attack on police recruitment

Seeking to deflect opposition's charges of irregularities in police recruitment in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today said his government was only following the previous BSP government's policy.
"You claim that recruitment done during your regime was hailed by then Union Home Minister...If that was the right procedure, we are only following the same. How can we be wrong?" he asked, winding up a debate on home department budget in the Assembly, which had witnessed pandemonium on March 24 with Opposition parties alleging grave irregularities in the recruitments and demanding a CBI or judicial probe.
"How come your recruitment got medal and ours is being criticised?" the Chief Minister countered pointing at the BSP benches.

Akhilesh said he was "fully aware" that BJP was behind the ongoing agitation against police recruitment.
"I have not received any specific complaint," he said, asserting that the recruitment has been done in a completely transparent manner.
"The present recruitment of constables and SIs is pending since 2011...It was delayed because of court cases," he said, adding, his government is preparing to recruit 40,000 more police personnel in the coming months.

Attacking the BSP, Akhilesh asked them to do introspection before facing the upcoming Assembly elections.
"We have neither demoted or superseded officers nor have we misbehaved with them. I know officers were made to take off their shoes before entering the Chief Minister's home in the previous regime," he said.

He also asked whether it was not true that engineers and doctors were murdered in the previous regime and several of the former ministers are in jail for scams.
"BSP knows who burnt the house of a senior Congress leader in the Mayawati regime," he said, referring to the gutting of Congress MLA Rita Bahuguna Joshi's house in Lucknow in 2009.