Yogi’s Claim of No Riot in Uttar Pradesh is More Fiction Than Fact

Data obtained from more than one source establishes that Yogi Adityanath’s claims are far from the reality.

At the cusp of completing two years in office, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath highlighted his achievements in a series of tweets.

In his first tweet on Thursday, 3 January, he claimed that no incident of rioting has taken place under his tenure.

मार्च में मेरे शासनकाल के दो वर्ष पूरे होंगे। मेरे अब तक के शासन में, कोई दंगा नहीं हुआ है।

— Yogi Adityanath (@myogiadityanath) January 3, 2019

In another tweet – again highlighting the improved law and order under his rule – he claimed that his government has put a brake on organised crime.

He said, “We have put a check on organised crime and strengthened the rule of law. Apart from incidents of family feud and personal animosity, people across the state find themselves safe.”

हमने संगठित किस्म के अपराध पर एक हद तक काबू पा लिया है। हमने कानून के राज को मजबूत बनाया है। पारिवारिक झगड़े या निजी दुश्मनी के कुछ मामलों को छोड़ दें तो फिर पूरे प्रदेश में अब लोग सुरक्षित हैं।

— Yogi Adityanath (@myogiadityanath) January 3, 2019

His claims attracted immediate engagement on the social media.

The first tweet had been retweeted close to 2,000 times at the time of publishing this article. The other tweet, too, had 248 retweets.

However, data obtained from more than one source establish that Adityanath’s claims are far from the reality.

What We Found Out

Let us now deal with the two tweets in question, one-by-one. While, the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) ‘Crime in India’ report for the year 2017 has not yet been published, even a cursory look at headlines from the state over the last two years, would challenge Adityanath’s claims.

• In May 2017, only a couple of months after he took oath as the chief minister, caste clashes in Saharanpur left at least 1 dead and several injured.
• Then, in January 2018, violence broke out in the western UP district of Kasganj, and communal clash resulted in the death of an individual.
• In early December last year, yet another western UP town of Bulandshahr witnessed unrest, resulting in the killing of two people, including a police inspector.
• As 2018 was coming to a close, another cop got killed after violence broke out in Ghazipur.

Adityanath’s second tweet, claiming people being safe in Uttar Pradesh, seems even more outrageous.

A recent report on FactChecker.in showed that with 93 attacks as of 26 December, the year 2018 saw the most hate crime motivated by religious bias in India in a decade. Incidentally, Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh had the highest number of such attacks – as many as 27.

Another set of data put out by the same portal shows that since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in the state in March 2017, the state has recorded 69 percent of the country’s cases of bovine-related violence.

Moreover, data from the Ministry of Home Affairs also punctures his claims. Statistics furnished by the Home Ministry in the Parliament in February 2018 show that Uttar Pradesh topped the list in incidents of communal violence in 2017.

As many as 44 people were killed and 540 were injured in UP in 2017, the year Yogi came to power.

Denying Facts: A Yogi Habit

This is not first occasion though, when the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister has chosen to turn his face away from facts.

Just a few months before the Home Ministry data was tabled in the Parliament, he had said that there had been no incidents of riot in the first eight months of his tenure, reported NDTV.

In the days that followed Bulandshahr violence, Adityanath termed the Bulandshahr violence a “political conspiracy” hatched by those who have lost ground. The chief minister’s statement came even as the probe was on and was yet to reach any conclusion.