Union home minister Rajnath Singh and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath flagged off the much-awaited Lucknow Metro Rail, an 8.5-km priority corridor from Charbagh to Transport Nagar, on Tuesday. But the question that everybody wants to know is who gets the credit for the project?
A day before the commercial run of the Metro is inaugurated, the Adityanath government and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav took to Twitter to take the credit, reported The Indian Express.
According to the Samajwadi Party, Yadav has already flagged off the project when he was the chief minister.
Yadav also posted his photographs on his personal Twitter handle with team members and officials of Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation.
“Lucknow Metro will make life easy and will recall the memories about Sreedharanji and the team that made the dream come true,” Akhilesh tweeted, the reported said.
Soon after, the chief minister’s office posted a 2.27-minute video on its official Twitter handle, in which Adityanath is seen saying, “Your wish has finally come true. This Metro is yours — this is a gift for your from the Central and state governments.”
“We have set a target of March 2019 to complete the second phase of the project,” Adityanath said in the video, added the report.
On Monday, Samajwadi Party workers celebrated at Charbagh metro station in Lucknow, according to ANI. They also demanded that Yadav be given credit for the project.
Yadav and his father Mulayam Singh Yadav had flagged off the trial run on the same stretch in December last year, just ahead of the assembly elections, to showcase it as a signature project of the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government.
In February, Yadav accused the railway ministry of not releasing the no-objection certificate (NOC) for the commercial cooperation of the Metro train in Lucknow.
"People are saying that no one can enjoy a ride in the metro train. But they should know that the railway ministry--which comes under Central government--has not given NOC to operate the train commercially," he said, addressing a public meeting in Lucknow, reported The Times of India.
