Podcast | No, Yogi Adityanath, UP Has Not Been Riot-Free Under You

27 deaths over communal conflict and at least four violent clashes took place under Yogi’s governance.

(Photo: The Quint)

Yogi Adityanath will complete two years as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister in March 2019. So a few weeks ahead of this, Yogi proudly tweeted….. मेरे अब तक के शासन में, कोई दंगा नहीं हुआ है। Which roughly translates to, “Under my governance there hasn’t been a single riot in UP.”

Which isn’t true. But we’ll get to that in a minute. A minute after the first tweet, Yogi Adityanath posted another tweet – “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.”

Hmm….Funny thing is, neither of these claims are true. And on this episode of the big story podcast, we’ll tell you, with evidence and data, why the UP CM’s claim that there were no riots in the state under his watch….is more fiction than fact!

The dictionary defines a riot as “a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd”.

Now let’s deal with this one by one. Yogi’s first tweet – which says there was no riot in the two years he’s been chief minister – is completely untrue. A quick look at the headlines over the past two years would tell you otherwise.

But let me quickly refresh your memory. In May 2017, barely two months after Yogi became CM, violent clashes broke out in Saharanpur between Dalits and thakurs. A Thakur procession celebrating Maharana Pratap was passing through a Dalit neighbourhood and this led to violence.

One person was killed, 16 were hurt, and 17 people were arrested.

Wasn’t this a riot?

In January 2018, violence broke out in UP’s Kasganj after members of the ABVP – the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad held a flag rally, and drove through a Muslim neighbourhood carrying saffron flags.

Violence followed and one person lost his life. Two fact-finding teams reported that the ABVP were refused permission for taking the rally through the route they chose but went ahead anyway.

Just a month ago, on 3 December 2018, a mob of 300-500 attacked Bulandshahr’s Chingravati police station after cow carcasses were discovered in a nearby forest. Two people were killed in the clashes that followed.

A police officer and a civilian.

In the last days of 2018, more clashes broke out, this time in Ghazipur. Violent clashes broke out in Ghazipur after people pelted stones at a protest rally organised by the Nishad Party.

One more police officer was killed in the violence.

The National Crime Records Bureau hasn’t released their crime statistics for 2017, but a simple look at the news proves that the UP CM’s claim is not true.

In contradiction to Yogi’s second tweet – where he claims that people feel safer than ever in Uttar Pradesh now – a report on FactChecker.in states:

At least 93 attacks took place in India in 2018, all motivated by some form of religious bias. Out of these 93 attacks 27 were from Uttar Pradesh.

Another dataset showed that after the BJP came to power in 2017, 69 percent of the country’s cow-related violence came from UP.

Finally, a Home Ministry report from February 2018 said that UP topped the country in instances of communal violence in 2017. Forty-four people died and at least 540 were injured as a result of communal violence in UP in 2017.

But Yogi’s denial of the facts is nothing new. After the Home Ministry’s report in February, Yogi said that there had been no riots in UP since he came to power.

So while the CM may claim that UP is riot-free since he came to power, the data clearly says otherwise.