Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath again played up the issue of firing on “Ram bhakts” (kar sevaks) in Ayodhya during the Samajwadi Party (SP) rule in 1990 at one of the two caste outreach meetings that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) organised in Lucknow on Friday.

“Remember the Ayodhya firing on Ram bhakts in 1990s? Had a BJP government been there then, none would have dared to do so,” Adityanath said at a meeting featuring Dalits.

“Will you forgive those who opened fire on Lord Ram devotees?,” the chief minister asked. Yogi Adityanath was referring to the police firing on kar sevaks gathered in Ayodhya on the saffron outfits’ call in 1990 when SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav was the Uttar Pradesh chief minister.

Now, with the BJP in power at the Centre and the state, a grand Ram temple is being constructed in Ayodhya, he said, adding it is an opportunity for 135 crore Indians to hold their heads high before the world.

On Thursday, too, Adityanath had raised the same issue during a caste outreach meet.

While Adityanath played up the firing issue during a meeting of the Loniya Dalit community, the other caste outreach meet featured Yadavs, a dominant Other Backward Classes (OBC) group considered loyal to the main opposition Samajwadi Party. The BJP has named these caste outreach meetings as samajik pratinidhi sammelan (social representative meeting).

At the second meeting, UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh presented the party’s state secretary Subhash Yaduvansh as a leader of the future.

“He is a young turk and a community leader of the future,” the UP BJP chief said at the meeting reflecting party’s plan to groom Yaduvansh, a former youth BJP chief, now promoted to the party’s main state body.

“We have few leaders from the community but in Yaduvansh, who has featured in the party’s scheme of things in the regime of three successive party chiefs shows the party’s desire to groom home grown young Yadav community leadership,” a party leader said.

On his part, Yaduvansh targeted the Samajwadi Party claiming that Yadavs believe in ‘roti-beti’ (bread-daughter) connection, something which the SP leadership has failed to do.

“They are five-star people, cut off from us,” Yaduvansh said in his speech.