Lucknow: In the press conference held at the Congress headquarters, former Union Minister P. Chidambaram said that Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections 2022 has been a hard-fought election. The Congress has after a long time has planted its flags in all 403 constituencies and has given a new dimension to the goal of gender equality with its campaign 'Ladki hoon, Lada Sakti Hoon', adds former Union Minister.
Chidambaram said that Priyanka Gandhi has campaigned tirelessly in the vast state of Uttar Pradesh. He further appealed to people to vote for the Congress candidates in the ongoing Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
The former Union Minister said that the campaign speeches and promises made by the leaders have left him 'sad' and 'apprehensive' about the future of the state. He adds that Uttar Pradesh is the most populous, boasts of hard-working people in India and the state has sent eight honorable Prime Ministers to Delhi yet the state is economically 'poor'.
He slammed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and said that in the last five years under BJP the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) of Uttar Pradesh has declined 11.4% in 2016-17 to -64 percent in 2020-21.
Targeting the tenure of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, he adds that the per capita income has come down significantly which is less than half of the national average. The per capita income has actually declined by 1.9%. According to NITI Aayog, 37 percent of the population is below the poverty line, adds P. Chidambaram
He also said that the total debt of the state is Rs.6,6,2891 crore which is 34.2% of GSDP and the unemployment rate for youth in the age group of 15 to 29 is in double digits since April 2018 as one out of four youth in urban areas is unemployed.
He highlighted that a large number of posts are lying vacant in the government and one in eight students drop out of school in the state.
He said that Yogi Adityanath's government is a dictatorial government. Women are not safe in this government and the neonatal mortality rate of Uttar Pradesh is 35.7 percent. The infant mortality rate is 50.4 percent and the mortality rate of children under 5 years is 59.8 percent which is well above the national average. The ratio of doctors is 0.64 and of nurses is 0.43 while the ratio of paramedics is 1.38.
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