(MENAFN- IANS) Lucknow, Oct 12 (IANS) In the backdrop of a minor's gang-rape in Lucknow, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday slammed the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government for lawlessness, corruption, oppression, injustice and all-round failure.

“The law and order of the state has become zero,” he said, reacting to the incident of alleged gang-rape of a girl in Lucknow and mocking the BJP government's claims of showing 'zero tolerance' towards crime.

He also slammed the alleged encounters involving criminals.“If encounters were the antidote for improving law and order, then their thousands of such actions would have yielded results.”

“The police, who are responsible for controlling crime, are being used by the government to pursue a political agenda and file false cases against rival politicians,” he alleged.

“When the BJP uses the police for political matters, the law and order are bound to deteriorate. This is the reason why women are unsafe on a very large scale,” he said.

Referring to a recent incident of gang-rape in Lucknow, Yadav said that data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that Uttar Pradesh has seen the maximum number of crimes against Dalits, especially the PDA community, under the BJP government.

The PDA refers to pichde (backward classes), Dalits and alpsankhyak (minorities).

Yadav said, "The BJP wants to hide its failures. Sitting on a white table, the Chief Minister speaks lies. While they meet people from such positions, the truth is that the most oppression, injustice, and such serious crime incidents are continuously happening in Uttar Pradesh. It is not just incidents; the limits of corruption have been crossed.”

The department which should be serving people is suffering from corruption, he said, citing an example of a lekhpal in Kanpur who was found to possess around Rs 100 crore in illegal assets.

Hitting out at an alleged overall failure of administration, Yadav said,“Neither the health department nor the education department has failed to serve the people.”

He criticised the administration for disallowing his party workers from garlanding the statue of Jaiprakash Narayan on his birth anniversary on Saturday.

“The call for revolution by JP was done because unemployment and corruption had peaked,” he said, alleging a growing gap between the poor and the rich.

Yadav also paid tribute to Ram Manohar Lohia on his death anniversary on Sunday.

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