Hindustan Times (Lucknow)

On BJP agenda: 24x7 helpline at CM office, anti-Romeo force

- Manish Chandra Pandey manish.pandey@hindustant­imes.com

The new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh plans to set up a 24X7 helpline at the chief minister’s office in Lucknow to enable people to report cases of corruption.

The anti-corruption helpline finds mention in the 23-page Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra, a vision document that is now expected to guide the BJP government’s agenda in UP.

A special bus service to bridge the urban-rural divide, roundthe-clock electricit­y, six AIIMStype super specialty medical centres are also expected to top the party’s agenda.

A major challenge before the BJP is to fill up, within three months of assuming power, the vacant posts in the state in a transparen­t manner, as it has promised.

“We shall be adhering to the Sankalp Patra. It is a comprehens­ive document for state’s developmen­t,” UP BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya told HT soon after his party swept UP.

Having won an unpreceden­ted mandate from Bundelkhan­d and Purvanchal where it hadn’t done well in years, the BJP would be setting up developmen­t boards for these two backward regions of the state.

Linking state’s centres of religious tourism – Mathura, Vrindavan, Ayodhya, Prayag, Vindhyacha­l, Chitrakoot, Kushinagar and Varanasi – with helicopter service is also on the cards.

Anti-encroachme­nt task force, a special task force to look into all aspects of corruption in the last 15 years, and a special force to check illegal mining along with three special women police battalions and an anti-Romeo force to check eve-teasers too are among the party’s commitment­s.

Throughout his UP rallies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised that waiving off loans of small and marginal farmers would be the first decision of a BJP government.

“The party’s government will honour the PM’s commitment,” said Naveen Srivastava, a state BJP leader.

The BJP has also decided to improve upon Akhilesh Yadav’s free laptop scheme. The party would be providing laptops with 1GB free internet data to all college-going youth.

Other promises include creating 10 internatio­nal-level universiti­es, an engineerin­g and polytechni­c college in all districts, wifi facility in all schools and colleges, a panel to regulate fees of private schools, free education for all girls till graduation and for boys till intermedia­te level.

 ?? HT FILE PHOTO ?? The anticorrup­tion helpline finds mention in the BJP vision document released in January.
HT FILE PHOTO The anticorrup­tion helpline finds mention in the BJP vision document released in January.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from India