Lucknow: UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav’s decision to terminate populist schemes, including free laptop distribution and unemployment allowance for the youth, has been met with considerable dismay from within the Samajwadi Party.
The budget presented by the Chief Minister on Friday has made no allocation for these schemes and the government later admitted that the schemes were “over”. The Samajwadis feel that the termination of these schemes that had been touted as the flagship schemes of the Akhilesh government will cause irreparable damage to the party.
“We came to power because of our laptop scheme and now the government has decided to call it off. Laptops have not been distributed to students who passed out in 2013 and 2014 and the tablets never got distributed at all. Now the termination of the scheme will cause further damage and we will lose out on youth support,” said a former president of the Samajwadi youth wing. A senior Samajwadi Party minister, on condition of anonymity, said that such rash decisions will further dent the image of the SP government.
