Lakhimpur Kheri violence: Akhilesh foresees regime change as BJP leader skips farmers' kin in visit to site

Slamming the Uttar Pradesh government over the Lakhimpur Kheri incident, former chief minister of state and Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday alleged that “the BJP government was anti-farmer” and claimed that there will be a regime change in the state soon. “The BJP workers crushed and killed the farmers with their vehicles. This government is anti-farmer, manure-stealer, and is behind the rise of prices of pesticides,” alleged Yadav. “Fake Baba will be removed soon,” the SP leader claimed while addressing the ‘Rath Yatra’ ahead of Uttar Pradesh Assembly election 2022. “This government has cheated the public. Under this government, inflation has increased, unemployment has increased, corruption has increased, crime has increased, law and order have collapsed,” he alleged. Yadav said that in the upcoming Assembly polls the SP will fight in alliance with the small parties. “We will not ally with any national party,” he added. Meanwhile, in the BJP camp, while UP law minister Brijesh Pathak on Wednesday became the first senior BJP leader to visit the area, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman became the first BJP leader to criticise Ashish Mishra and calling the killing of four farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri “absolutely condemnable”. But Pathak’s visit has kicked up a row because he left after visiting the families of only two of those killed: BJP worker Shubham Mishra and MoS Ajay Mishra’s driver Hari Om Mishra. He did not meet the families of four others from the area who lost their lives: farmers Nachhattar Singh and Lovepreet Singh, BJP worker Shyam Sunder Nishad, and journalist Raman Kashyap. The two other farmers who were killed, Gurvinder Singh and Diljeet Singh, were from the neighbouring Bahraich district. As per an  Indian Express report, the minister said, “I will visit their families of Nishad and Kashyap as soon as the situation normalises in that region as they live close to the spot where the incident took place.” The minister also said that he would hold talks with the families of the farmers who were killed “once the situation normalises”. Opposition parties, however, has criticised Pathak’s visit and described it as “an attempt to divert attention” from the incident. Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait warned that it “may be a bit too early for a BJP minister to visit the families” of the farmers killed. “There may be a reaction from the families, so if someone has to go, permission should be taken from the families,” he said. BJP district chief Sunil Singh has said the family of Nishad, which belongs to an OBC community, has been assured that another delegation led by the party’s state general secretary Amar Pal Maurya would visit Lakhimpur Kheri on 16 October. He said Maurya’s delegation would also visit the family of Kashyap. On the same day Ashish Mishra, son of Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra, was denied bail by a local court in Lakhimpur. Senior prosecution officer (SPO) SP Yadav told PTI that Chief Judicial Magistrate Chinta Ram rejected the bail applications of Mishra and his alleged accomplice Ashish Pandey. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of UP Police also arrested two more persons — 38-year-old Ankit Das and 37-year-old Lateef alias Kala — in connection with the incident, taking the total number of arrests in the case to six.