Modi's mission turns photo op for UP netas

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s clean campaign may have been enthusiastically followed by many, but at some places in Uttar Pradesh it was reduced to a photo op by none other than the BJP leaders and workers on Thursday.

In Kanpur, the BJP leaders vied with each other to get close to the state unit chief Laxmikant Bajpai, who had a broom in his hand, not giving him any space to sweep. 

Bajpai was so irked over the pushing and shoving among the workers that he was seen shouting at them and pushing them aside.

The UP saffron party unit chief lost his cool again when ignoring his pleas, the workers tried to come close to him so that they too could be photographed.

In Meerut town, the campaign was reduced to mockery, when the local BJP MP Rajendra Agarwal and other party leaders and workers swept a road which had already been cleaned by the authorities earlier in the day.

Reports said the railway officials had, as part of the campaign, cleaned the station and the adjoining areas in the morning. Incidentally the BJP MP and his supporters chose to clean the same area and reached there a little later.

As there was nothing there to be swept, one saffron party worker was seen deliberately dropping a few pieces of crumpled paper and the MP later picked them up and threw them in the dustbin.

Railway officials said that they had been informed on Wednesday that Agarwal would be there on Thursday and hence thay had already cleaned the entire area.

Elsewhere however BJP leaders and others took part in the campaign quite seriously.
 Union Minister Rajnath Singh undertook a cleanliness drive at Lucknow railway station, while his cabinet colleague Uma Bharti participated in the Clean India campaign inJhansi.