The credit for Uttar Pradesh’s top ranking in the latest Index for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) released by NITI Aayog goes only to the Yogi Adityanath Government, Finance Minister Suresh Khanna said on Saturday.
In his response to the SDG figures, Khanna said that it bears testimony to the UP’s march on the path of sustainable development under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Taking a dig at the previous governments of Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the minister added that development of the state had for years been been caught in the quagmire of corruption and that the Yogi Government after assuming office first cleared the mess created by the previous governments to make a new beginning.
“The Yogi Government not only made a fresh beginning in terms of measures aimed at achieving sustainable development of the state, but also ensured that the development was fast during its tenure”, he said while adding “it is no flash in the pan but was done with immaculate planning and for that the marathon 36 hours debate was organised in the state assembly followed by formation of committees and sub-committees to ensure systematic development but sadly the opposition stayed away from that .”
Providing clean, affordable energy for the state is one of the major achievements of the Yogi Government, he remarked.
Suresh Khanna said that development of UP had come to a complete halt during the Akhilesh Yadav government. The entire state government machinery was immersed in corruption and was busy in the development of a single family. So, the first thing that the Yogi Government did was to clean the system to bring the state on the path of development, he pointed out. This was followed by achievement of several milestones by the government year after year in terms of development.
As a result of the policies of CM Yogi, today UP has topped in ensuring access to affordable and sustainable energy. The state has retained the top spot among states this year in attaining the ‘Goal 7’ and has been honoured as an ‘Achiever’, as it showed an improvement of +37 points in the score for this SDG.
Khanna said that the reason for the discomfiture of Akhilesh Yadav, who has always avoided participating in a discussion on development, and other opposition leaders is the stunning pace of development of UP under the CM that is getting noticed nationally. He added further that the the opposition leaders in UP have held the state to ransom all these years because of their dynastic and appeasement politics as well as involvement in corruption. They have been running away from debates on development even in the house.
It is worth mentioning here that that the overall score of Uttar Pradesh has improved by five points, going up from 42 in 2018 to 55 in 2019 and 60 in 2020-21, according to the latest SDG Index.
Under the leadership of CM Yogi, Uttar Pradesh has emerged as the ‘Achiever’ and the ‘Front-runner’ in maximum parameters as the state has shown tremendous improvement in its performance in all parameters in a span of just two years.
In a significant development, Uttar Pradesh has been ranked as one of the best performing states in Goal 8 (decent work and economic growth) with a Feedback score of 50.1 by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). Uttar Pradesh has also registered the steepest decline, close to 17 percent, in desertified area.
