Union Minister Amit Shah on 1 August addressed a public gathering at Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, for the upcoming polls which are scheduled in 2022. Shah extolled the state Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath and sang praises of him as he stated that Uttar Pradesh has topped the country with regard to the law and order situation and the economy has grown two-fold in just 4 years of his tenure. He further said that the state has secured the second position in terms of economic growth. The state’s economy grew from 11 lakh crore to 22 lakh crore in the period of last four years. Besides, the state has also become riot-free and safer for women.

Making further such comments, Shah bespoke of Yogi Adityanath’s accomplishments and added a few other statements, which were later found to be inaccurate as per the actual data. Three of those claims are:

1. The current government has worked towards making Uttar Pradesh riot-free and has successfully done so since coming to power in 2017.

2. Since BJP came to power in the state, Uttar Pradesh has become safer for women.

3. While previous governments ‘left’ the state with only 10 medical colleges and the Aditynath government has made provisions for 40 new ones in the last 4 years.

Digging in further, it was found that these three claims do not quite match with the actual claims, as;

The claim which states, ‘the current government has worked towards making Uttar Pradesh riot-free and has successfully done so since coming to power in 2017’, is false.

The data was found to be groundless as according to the National Crime Records Bureau’s ‘Crime in India report’ contradicts the Home Minister’s statements. As per the 2019 NCRB report, 5,714 instances of rioting were recorded in the state.

The state ranks third in the number of cases of rioting, after Maharashtra and Bihar.

In the year 2018 as well, UP ranked third with 8,908 instances of rioting and in 2017, it ranked second behind Bihar, with 8,990 cases. Further, as per an answer given by the Ministry of Home Affairs in the Lok Sabha, dated 11 December 2018, Uttar Pradesh ranked one in ‘communal incidents’ in the year 2017. It had the highest number of incidents in comparison to years 2014-16.

Moreover, Uttar Pradesh police had also charged more than 135 people with rioting during protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in February 2020.

Moving ahead to the second claim, which states that, ‘since BJP came to power in the state, Uttar Pradesh has become safer for women’ was proved to be wrong as according to NCRB’s report on ‘Crime Against Women’, Uttar Pradesh has registered 59,853 cases in 2019. The number has increased each year since 2017. However, the crime rate in UP is 55.4 cases per 1,00,000 people.

 As for the third claim, according to which, ‘the Adityanath government was capable of making provisions for 40 new medical colleges during the tenure of 4 years, whereas the previous governments ‘left’ the state with only 10 medical colleges in last 15 years’.

This claim too was proved wrong as, as per a 2018 document by the Reference Division of Parliamentary Library, there were 45 medical colleges in Uttar Pradesh in 2016-2017. Out of which, 16 were government colleges, while 29 were private colleges. Further, in a written reply in the Lok Sabha in 2016, former Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Faggan Singh Kulaste had stated that Uttar Pradesh had 38 medical colleges.

Additionally, former Minister of State (MoS) for Health and Family Welfare Ashwini Kumar Choubey told the Lok Sabha in February 2021 that 12 medical colleges (nine government + three private) were established between 2018-2020.

On the same day, responding to a separate question, Choubey said that “establishment of 27 new medical colleges have been approved in Uttar Pradesh, as proposed by the state”.

 Thus, while all the other accomplishments of the Yogi government are deemed to be true and his performance as a Chief Minister has been exceptionally good  and praiseworthy but a few of the aforementioned claims by the Home Minister do not match with the actual found data.