Congress leader Shashi Tharoor took to Twitter to take a swipe at Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath over his cabinet’s holy dip at the Kumbh Mela on Tuesday.
In a rare tweet in Hindi, Tharoor said, “You want to keep the Ganga clean and also wash your sins here. Everyone’s naked in the Sangam. Jai Ganga maiyya.”
Yogi Adityanath held a cabinet meeting at the Kumbh mela in Prayagraj, the meet was followed by the CM and his ministers taking a holy dip in the Sangam.
Reacting to Tharoor’s comment, UP minister Siddharth Nath Singh said he doesn’t understand the importance of Kumbh. “How will he understand importance of Kumbh? The atmosphere he’s in, the culture he has been brought up in, doesn’t understand this. You people have committed a lot of misdeeds, take a holy dip in Kumbh and you might be able to repent for your sins,” Singh said.
The UP cabinet also watched Vicky Kaushal-starrer ‘Uri: The Surgical Strike’ at a special screening in a mobile theatre. Ahead of the movie screening, Adityanath also announced exemption of state GST for the film.
This was the first time that the UP cabinet held an official meeting outside Lucknow. The meeting in Prayagraj is part of a series of decisions that Adityanath has taken to boost the profile of the Kumbh Mela, one of the world’s largest pilgrimages.
Ahead of the meeting, Adityanath and his cabinet ministers visited the Allahabad fort built by Mughal emperor Akbar to see the Akshaywat, an ancient banyan tree mentioned Hindu mythology.
Adityanath expects the Kumbh mela to boost the BJP’s campaign in Uttar Pradesh in the general elections due by May. The state sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha and the BJP has been insisting that it will better its record of 71 seats that it won in 2014.