Over 1,000 children died in UP's Gorakhpur in last 12 months, claims Akhilesh Yadav after Yogi Adityanath slams Congress over infant deaths in Kota

Lucknow: Amid a political storm over infant deaths in Kota, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Friday alleged that over a thousand children have died in the last 12 months in Gorakhpur and asked the Uttar Pradesh government as to who was responsible for it. Training his guns on the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yadav said, “Yogi Adityanath is worried about Kota deaths. When will he be worried about the Gorakhpur deaths.” Yadav told a press conference in Lucknow that the ailing children in Gorakhpur were suffering from encephalitis but were administered different medicines so that the truth did not come out that they were dying of encephalitis. [caption id=“attachment_7838061” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav. PTI[/caption] “I will soon release a list of the dead children,” he said. “Why wrong medicines were administered? Who is answerable?” he asked. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister had on Thursday targeted the Congress over infant deaths in Rajasthan, saying party leader Priyanka Gandhi should have gone there to console the children’s mothers instead of “playing politics” in UP. At least 100 infants have died at a government-run hospital in Kota in the past month. On Uttar Pradesh BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh’s remark that the SP chief should stay in Pakistan for a month to understand atrocities being faced by Hindus there, Yadav said the saffron party has made this suggestion as it does not want any discussion on unemployment. Yadav also said very soon Samajwadi Party workers will take out rallies all over the state against the National Population Register (NPR), noting that it would do no good to the people. “Nahi chahiye NPR, humey chahiye rozgar (We don’t need NPR, we need employment) will be our slogan,” he said. The SP chief’s remarks came against the backdrop of the Union Cabinet approving Rs 8,500 crore for updating the NPR. He accused the BJP of being silent on economic issues, rising prices of essential commodities, higher cost of cooking gas cylinders and costlier electricity, he said. Referring to the recent clashes in Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party chief claimed that all the deaths during the anti-CAA protests were during police firing. “All the deaths were caused by police bullets,” he claimed. Officials have maintained the death toll at 19, with some of the casualties in police firing which took place in “self-defence”.