Azamgarh, March 10 -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said the "poison of appeasement" was weakening with Uttar Pradesh touching new heights of development, as he slammed nepotism in politics in a constituency often linked with the Mulayam-Akhilesh Yadav family.

Addressing a rally in Azamgarh, he slammed the Yadavs for treating Azamgarh as their bastion and alleged that this very "nepotism" led some people to take a dig at him that he does not have a family.

'In the last election, the family, which considered Azamgarh its bastion, was defeated by a youth like Dinesh (Dinesh Lal Yadav Nirahua MP of Azamgarh),' Modi said.

Late SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav won the Azamgarh parliamentary seat in 2014, and after him, his son Akhilesh Yadav won it in 2019.

The party, however, lost the seat to BJP's Dinesh Lal Yadav in the 2022 by-election, which was necessitated by Akhilesh's vacating the seat and deciding to contest the Assembly poll from Karhal.

'Due to this 'parivaarvad,' (the opposition) people are so frustrated that they abuse Modi. They say that Modi doesn't have a family. They forget that the 140 crore population of the country is the family of Modi,' the PM said, also responding to RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav, who in a sally on March 3 asked him why he did not have a family.

Lalu Yadav had made the remark while addressing an INDIA bloc rally in Patna and slammed Modi for accusing the opposition of indulging in dynastic politics. 'As UP is touching new heights of development the poison of appeasement is weakening,' Modi said.

He said that Azamgarh, which was once considered backward, is a shining star today and is writing a new chapter of development for the country.

'Today, the star of Azamgarh is shining. There was a time when there would be an event in Delhi and other states would join in. Today, the event is being held in Azamgarh and thousands of people from different parts of the country are connecting with Azamgarh,' Modi said.

Before his speech, Modi inaugurated or laid the foundations of projects worth Rs 42,000 crore across the country, of which projects worth Rs 34,700 crore are in UP, with a major chunk of them involving the construction of airports and airport buildings.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.