1000 Children Died in Gorakhpur in 12 Months: Akhilesh on Kota Row

SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav.

(Photo: PTI)

Amid a political storm over infant deaths in Rajasthan's Kota, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Friday, 3 January alleged that over a thousand children have died in the last 12 months in Gorakhpur and asked the UP government as to who was responsible for it.

Training his guns on the UP Chief Minister, Yadav said, “Yogi Adityanath is worried about Kota deaths. When will he be worried about the Gorakhpur deaths”.

Yadav told a press conference here that the ailing children in Gorakhpur were suffering from encephalitis but were administered different medicines so that the truth did not come out that they were dying of encephalitis.

“Why wrong medicines were administered? Who is answerable? I will soon release a list of the dead children,” he said.

Hours later, Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma contested his claim.

“He (Akhilesh) needs to furnish evidence with the list and not level baseless allegations,” Sharma said at a press conference.

The chief minister had on Thursday targeted the Congress over infant deaths in Kota, saying party leader Priyanka Gandhi should have gone there to console the children's mothers instead of “playing politics” in UP.

At least 100 infants have died at a government-run hospital in Kota in the last one month.

On BJP state president Swatantra Dev Singh’s remark that the SP chief should stay in Pakistan for a month to understand atrocities being faced by Hindus there, Yadav said the saffron party has made the suggestion as it does not want any discussion on unemployment.

SP to Organise Anti-NPR rallies

Yadav also said that SP workers will soon take out rallies all over the state against the National Population Register (NPR), noting that it would do no good to the people.

“Nahi chahiye NPR, humey chahiye rozgar (We don't need NPR, we need employment) will be our slogan,” he said.

The SP chief's remarks came against the backdrop of the Union Cabinet approving Rs 8,500 crore for updating the NPR.

He accused the BJP of being silent on economic issues, rising prices of essential commodities, higher cost of cooking gas cylinders and costlier electricity.

Referring to the recent clashes in Uttar Pradesh, the SP chief claimed that all the deaths during anti-citizenship law protests were during police firing.

“All the deaths were caused by police bullets,” he claimed.

Officials have maintained that the death toll stands at 19, with some of the casualties in police firing that took place in “self defence”.