One must have heard about political parties making tall promises like free power or sops for the farmers and others in the run-up to the elections but an alliance partner of the Samajwadi Party (SP) made a shocking promise to the electorate if voted to power in the forthcoming assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
Om Prakash Rajbhar, former UP minister and president of the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP), promised to allow triple riders on the motorbikes if his party formed the next government in the state.
''We will allow triple riding on bikes.....they will not be fined,'' Rajbhar said while speaking to reporters in Meerut on Thursday.
Rajbhar advanced bizarre logic behind the promise, when queried further on the matter. ''It is quite common to see hundreds of people travelling in the coaches of the trains which have limited seating capacity.....against 70 berths we find 300 people travelling in the compartment...does the government or the Railway impose fine on them?'' he asked.
He said that the autorickshaws and tempos also fill their vehicles with passengers more than their seating capacity but they were also not fined. ''We will make sure that triple riders are not fined,'' he added.
The SBSP leader, whose party wielded considerable influence over the 'Rajbhar' (an OBC) community, which was in sizable numbers in over a dozen eastern UP districts, also took potshots at UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath and said that after the counting of votes on March ten, the latter would have to go back to the Gorakhnath Temple of which he was the 'Mahant' (religious head).
The song 'chal sanyasi mandir mein' (a song from Manoj Kumar-Hama Malini starrer Hindi movie Sanyasi) would be heard after March 10, Rajbhar said.
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