UP Fresh war of words between SP BJP over DNA row

     Lucknow, May 19 (PTI) Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak on Monday continued to trade barbs, with the BJP leader charging that the SP was "born with the DNA of Muslim appeasement" while the SP accused him of indulging in sycophancy and meaningless talk.
     Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath backed Pathak and advised the Samajwadi Party top brass to thoroughly review its social media handles and ensure that the language used there is decent, restrained, and dignified.
     The BJP leaders were reacting to a post targeting Pathak that was posted from the Samajwadi Party's official X handle.
     Yadav on Sunday said he was assured by his party workers that this would not happen again, and hoped that Pathak would as well stop making the kind of statements that triggered it.
     In the contentious post, the SP had also referred to news clippings where Pathak had referred to "DNA of Samajwadi Party."
     In a post on X, Adityanath said, "Although it is futile to expect any ideal conduct from the Samajwadi Party, but civilised society cannot tolerate their indecent and vulgar statements. The top leadership of the Samajwadi Party should thoroughly review their social media handles and ensure that the language used there is decent, restrained and dignified."
     Earlier, in a lengthy post on X in Hindi, Pathak took a dig at Akhilesh, saying he did not mean his family by the "DNA" remark but the ideological lineage of his party's ideology.
     "Problem in DNA means that the foundation of your party's politics has been based on casteism and appeasement, and it still is," he charged.
     Pathak also alleged that Muslim appeasement has been the central part of the SP's politics.
     "Be it education policy, appointments or law and order issues, your governments have repeatedly ignored the rest of the society to please a particular class. This has deepened the division and distrust in society.
     "As chief minister, you withdrew 14 cases related to terrorists with your signature, so that your party's Muslim appeasement DNA keeps getting nourishment. In such a situation, I can explain very well why you are so agitated by the questioning of DNA," Pathak said, adding, the remark shouldn't have hurt Akhilesh so much.
     The UP deputy chief minister also accused the SP of being anti-Dalit and alleged that during the rule of the Samajwadi Party, the rights of Dalits were repeatedly crushed.
     Hitting back, Akhilesh said those who have nothing to do indulge in idle talk, those who work move forward in life.
     The former chief minister also appealed to people to pledge to positive politics and the formation of a PDA (Pichhda, Dalit, Alpsankhyak) government committed to social justice.
     "Those who are not valued in their own party, who carry the badge of failure in their ministries, waste time in sycophancy and pointless discussions. I request him to play a constructive role and speak out even indirectly against the alleged atrocities committed on his community (if the community one per cent considers him as their own) under the BJP-led state government," he said.
     Akhilesh advised Pathak to be "mature, soft-spoken and courteous" and not to be blindly trusting of the BJP.
     "You are not originally theirs; you came from outside and are trying to blend in by imitating them. Don't let your political exploitation continue," he said.
     Before joining the BJP, Pathak was in the Bahujan Samaj Party.
     Yadav advised Pathak to reflect on the fate of the "key figures" in the BJP.
     "Today they are nowhere; tomorrow you could be in the same place," he said.
     Though Akhilesh said this was his final letter in this series, he later in the evening again took to X, to draw Pathak's attention to the death of a girl allegedly caused by negligence at a private hospital in Chhibramau, Kannauj district, his parliamentary constituency.
     The former UP chief minister called the incident "extremely serious" and demanded that the minister "ensure appropriate action without delay."
     Akhilesh sought from the government the number of state medical colleges that can provide proper diagnostic and treatment facilities and whether they were equipped with the required doctors, staff and machinery.
     He also raised questions on the operational status of oxygen plants, the frequency with which patients are sent outside hospitals for tests, and the extent to which physicians prescribe expensive branded medicines instead of generics.
     The SP leader queried staffing levels for hospital sanitation, the government's stance on medical corruption, and progress on proposed All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) campuses in the state.
     "For today's ailing public, the BJP is not needed," he wrote in his post.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)