Potatoes Dumped Outside Yogi Adityanath’s Residence, Cops Track 10,000 Phones

The people responsible for piling up potatoes in front of important government buildings including the road to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s house in Lucknow have been identified and caught. The Chief of city police department of Lucknow held a press conference and paraded the two accused with their heads covered.

The police went to the extent of going through hours of CCTV footage and putting approximately 10,000 phones on surveillance to apprehend the accused despite the fact that the registration number of the car responsible for the aforementioned act was already known to the police having being identified in the CCTV footage.

What led to the potato outrage?

Uttar Pradesh which accounts for around 35% of the potatoes produced in the country is reeling under an agrarian crisis. The potato farmers who have to pay rent to keep their produce in cold storages are unable to afford it as they find the rent exorbitant and in fact much more than the market price of potatoes. There have been recent cases where farmers have not even claimed their produce. It has been lying in the cold storages leading to wastage of the crop.

Police say it’s politically motivated

The Police in this particular case alleged that the two accused apprehended are the member of the Samajwadi party and thus it was politically motivated therefore it can’t be singled out as an act of defiance against the state government for its lackluster performance in the agriculture sector.

The vehicle used for dispersing potatoes in high security areas in Lucknow allegedly belongs to Sanju Katiyar who apparently is the husband of Kannauj district panchayat Chairperson Shilpi Chauhan. It is to be noted that Kannauj is the parliamentary constituency of Dimple Yadav who is the wife of ex-Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav.

The Uttar Pradesh police which has been recently in news for infamy attributed to them for being personal police of the ministers and the VIP’s. Recently, they were successful in finding a buffalo belonging to a minister in record time. Finding the potato miscreants is another badge of honor to be proud of.

The ex-Chief Minister of the state Mr Akhilesh Yadav taking cognizance of the incidence said that instead of giving importance to the act the issue that it purports to bring forth i.e. the plight of potato farmers in the state, must be highlighted.

The Logical Indian Take

The police has done a commendable job, but why did they put so much of an effort to find who dumped potatoes. And tapping 10,000 phones, just to find two miscreants? The CCTV footage clearly showed the car’s registration number which would have been enough to catch the two people but putting tapping into 10,000 phones.

It is an invasion of privacy. Also, the plight of the potato farmers should have been the priority and not why potatoes were dumped in places of importance.