On completing 100 days in office, saffron-clad Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday stunned everyone by doing a Mayawati and slipping out of the press conference he had himself called.

Even before anxiously awaiting scribes could fire the second question, Adityanath chose to walk away from the opulent Lok Bhawan, built as an exclusive chief minister’s office, by his predecessor Akhilesh Yadav at a whopping cost of Rs 603 crore.

Interestingly, even though the chief minister had quite enthusiastically convened the press conference, for which invitations were issued well in advance on the previous day, Adityanath seemed unprepared to answer questions. And much like former chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati, who always preferred to avoid questions at a press conference, he too left the entire press corps high and dry.

This was the second time in three months that Adityanath had called a press conference. The last one – shortly after being sworn in – was concluded after the first question was asked. He repeated the act once again no sooner than he replied to the first question. What surprised all and sundry was his turning a deaf ear to echoing appeals from media persons seeking to raise various issues.

Mayawati used to be no different. She too would just walk away after delivering a long monologue. She could rarely hide her contempt for the media, with which she generally avoided any kind of interaction.

What Yogi did was read out a long, written statement, highlighting the so-called “achievements” of his 100-day-old government. His information and PR machinery had already circulated a beautifully-printed booklet on the 100-day achievements of his government. The glossy, colourful 48-page booklet titled, “100 Din Vishwas Ke” (100 days of trust) carrying smiling portraits of both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath on the cover, began with a narration on the swearing-in ceremony on March 19 and concluded with a picture of the much-awaited Lucknow Metro.

Evidently, Akhilesh Yadav was not too far off the mark when he made a dig at the Yogi government by commenting, “Ram-naam japna; paraya kaam apna” (Chanting Ram’s name, the BJP government was taking credit for others’ work). The case of Lucknow Metro was too glaring to be ignored. It was common knowledge that the first phase of the 8-km of Metro rail was completed in record time during the Akhilesh regime with several trial runs, but the Centre held back its clearances for a commercial run simply because it did not want the credit to go to that regime. Now three months after the SP government was gone, the pending clearances were stated to be in the pipeline.

Interestingly, even as Yogi gave prominence to undertaking a Purvanchal Expressway as well as a Bundelkhand Expressway, he preferred not to talk about the Agra Expressway accomplished in record time by the previous regime. It had been thrown open to the public and was widely hailed for having brought down the driving time between Lucknow and Agra to less than three hours and having reduced the same to barely five hours between Noida and Lucknow. However, the Yogi government had not cared to complete the rest areas and toll plaza along the 300 km Lucknow-Agra expressway, perhaps for the same petty reason of not allowing the credit to be given to political rivals.

On the contrary, the highlights included Yogi’s announcement to waive agricultural loans upto Rs 1 lakh for about 86 lakh farmers, the clearance of pending Rs 22,517 crore sugarcane dues, official procurement of wheat and potato at the prescribed minimum support price, launching of new health support schemes as well as the commitment to improve power supply across the state.

With very little to boast of about the much-needed improvement in the law and order in the state, the booklet focused only on bare statistics relating to arrest of persons accused in various criminal cases. On the corruption front too, there was precious little that the government could claim to have done over the 100 days, despite Yogi’s unusually high score on the integrity front.

Yogi did talk very proudly of the anti-Romeo squads created by him, but failed to give any details of action taken against policemen and self-styled policemen for harassing innocent couples. There was no talk about effective action against cases of lynching and harassment of innocent persons on mere suspicion of carting cattle for slaughter or for having consumed beef (including the permitted buffalo meat). There was also no mention of action against officials involved in extending protection to illegal slaughter houses or against government functionaries conniving with petrol pump owners to under-measure fuel. Even as the Yogi administration had been earlier highlighting these two actions in a big way, there was no mention of these in the booklet.

There can be no denying that 100 days is too short a time for passing judgement on any government’s functioning. Then, why all the haste in making tall claims. And that too with the entire council of ministers being made to sit together on stage – something unheard of anywhere. Did someone advise the temple trust chief-turned-chief minister to have all his ministers in tow while making these claims? Was that another way to gain greater credibility?

With the buzz already doing the rounds of Yogi for PM in 2024, will the UP Chief Minister wise up and smarten his act or moo it away.

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