"Hope PM Learns About Love After Visit To The Taj City": Akhilesh Yadav

Hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Uttar Pradesh's Agra on Wednesday, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav taunted him on social media with a tweet featuring the Taj Mahal, the world-famous monument to love. "Hope the Prime Minister will learn something about love and affection from the Taj Mahal," the former UP chief minister tweeted in Hindi.

The Samajwadi chief posted on social media that he "hoped the PM will also remember the misery of potato, sugarcane and paddy farmers" near Agra. "Delhi was never so distanced from UP that the rulers couldn't see the sad state of the farmers and businesses," Mr Yadav tweeted.

The SP chief alleged that the BJP-led government had promised jobs to crores of youth but a recent incident exposed the false promises, when two crore unemployed youth applied for for 63,000 posts in the Railways. "The same young people who were promised employment will now throw out the government," said Mr Yadav. 

Hope the PM will also remember the misery of potato, sugarcane and paddy farmers, said Mr Yadav

The SP chief's all-out attack on PM Modi and his government comes amid reports that the CBI plans to question him in connection with investigations into 20 cases of illegal mining allegedly on Mr Yadav's watch. Sources have told NDTV that the CBI has prepared a list of questions for Mr Yadav, who was handling the mining portfolio. Mr Yadav has called the possible probe against him politically motivated ahead of the national election, in which the Samajwadi Party and Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) may tie up to take on the BJP. 

"Now we have to tell the CBI as to how many seats we have distributed in the gathbandhan (BSP-SP alliance)," he said. BSP chief Mayawati last week spoke to Mr Yadav on the phone and said that he shouldn't be "shaken by such gimmicks".