Yogi Adityanath might have replaced Akhilesh Yadav as the face of Uttar Pradesh chief minister, but he let his predecessor’s face stay on the school bags distributed by his government.
According to NDTV, officials of the UP government say that Aditynath did not want to waste public money and keeping his “political ego” aside, he distributed school bags with images of former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav printed on them.
The Bareilly district alone had over 35,000 schoolbags locked in their storeroom.
The Samajwadi Party government had announced in 2016 that it would distribute over 1.80 crore bags to students of class I to VIII enrolled in basic schools, and aided junior high schools, madrassas and secondary schools.
The officials also added that the new batch of school bags will now bear ‘Mukhia Mantri Yojana’ or ‘Uttar Pradesh Yojana.’
The Economic Times adds that numerous bags manufactured in the SP regime had been lying in the store rooms. The Deputy Director Education (primary) Abdul Mubin wrote to Basic Shiksha Adhikaris (BSAs) of 23 districts to take necessary action of the free bags.
Not just the CM’s photo, the bags also carried the tag lines ‘khoob padho, khoob badho’ (study well, progress well), and ‘ummedo ka pradesh, Uttar Pradesh’ (state of hope, Uttar Pradesh).
The Times of India in a report published in April said that the SP govt had started distributing the bags in late 2016. While over 46 districts received the bags, many others either did not receive them or just locked them in store rooms. With the change of leadership in the state a few months later, the officials were clueless as to what do with thousands of those bags.
(Feature image source: PTI)