Lucknow: A day after the Income Tax raids on his close aides, the Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav has accused the Uttar Pradesh government of tapping his telephones and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath of personally listening to the conversation in the evenings.
"All our phones are being tapped and our conversations are being recorded. All the phones in the party office are being eavesdropped; this 'anupyogi' CM himself is listening to some of the recordings in the evening. If you contact us, remember that your call is being listened to by them," he claimed.
‘‘The Yogi Adityanath government is running a WhatsApp University in the state,’’ Yadav further said in zest.
Addressing a press conference, the former CM said that they had anticipated that in the run-up to the assembly elections, the BJP government would start misusing various enforcement agencies to persecute SP leaders. "The government is using these agencies to make sure the SP does not form the ensuing government," Yadav said. He claimed the BJP seems to have sensed its impending defeat in the upcoming assembly polls.
Yadav said that the BJP too is toeing the Congress line in using central agencies to suppress its opponents. The BJP has been working on the same script that the Congress had handed it over.
Adityanath, in turn, defended the raids on Yadav's aides, brushing aside accusations of political vendetta. "I saw that the Samajwadi Party is getting needled by the raids. So, I asked someone, why is that so? The journalist replied, 'chor ki dadhi mein tinka'. Can anyone imagine how someone's wealth could have possibly grown 200 times in five years?" he asked.
The Chief Minister further asserted, "Would there have been action against criminals and mafias if the Samajwadi Party was in power? Do these people deserve your vote?" Adityanath was speaking in Mathura at the launch of one of the six 'Jan Vishwas Yatra' rallies planned from six separate locations of the state as part of the BJP's election campaign.
