UP under CM Ajay Mohan Bisht

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The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

George Orwell, 1984

Amidst the ongoing phases of elections in Uttar Pradesh, the political parties are busy rallying the support from voters to their side by hook or by crook. There is a widespread, organised campaign of misinformation circulating on tv, print, and social media. The idea is to cast a shadow so big that the voters get convinced that the politician who casts this shadow is also great. For most of the phases of this election, we tried to suppress our natural tendency of hitting back at fakery with facts. We intentionally abstained from it for maintaining neutrality.

But we stand corrected. The Chief Minister of UP is spearheading this misappropriation of facts to an extent where we are on the brink of losing our patience. We have realised that being apolitical is no longer an option. So, here we are, presenting nothing but absolute facts in front of you to lay bare the spitefulness of a man who dons saffron every day and stains saffron every day.

In this piece, we will look at the statements made by Ajay Bisht and unveil the truth around them.

1. Economy of UP growing faster than ever – There are countless incidents where Ajay Bisht had claimed that UP’s economy is the second-best in the country. This article of TOI from a year ago shows UP’s GSDP jumping from the fifth spot in 2019-20 to the second-best in 2020-21. On analysing the GSDP data of RBI, we found this claim to be false. Even the data represented in the table (shown below) is wrong.

We found that the GSDP of UP has never reached ₹19.4 lakh crores. It was ₹17.05 lakh crores in 2020-21.

But one can make an argument that this article has aged a year. So here is the most recent video of Ajay Bisht claiming that UP’s economy was in the 6th-7th position from 1947-2017. Listen around the 11:00 mark.

भारतीय जनता पार्टी कार्यालय, लखनऊ पर प्रेस वार्ता… https://t.co/wFssuEOVO9

— Yogi Adityanath (@myogiadityanath) February 3, 2022

However, anyone with a calculator or pen and paper can math out the RBI’s table provided above and find that Ajay Bisht is telling a big fat lie. UP was at third position at the end of Akhilesh’s (SP’s) Term, UP was at third position in 2019-20 and UP remains at third position in 2020-21.

As for Ajay Bisht’s faster than ever claim, we have compiled some plots. The percentage increase in GSDP during Ajay Bisht’s rule has not even matched SP’s term growth and it has never been at par with West Bengal’s growth for the same time period.

Quite a tight slap in the face for a man who instils fear in the citizens with statements like – “Be careful. If you err…U.P. will not take much time to become Bengal.” Now when we look at the plots, it’s time to think that it is actually not a bad idea.

2. UP has emerged as a business-friendly destination – While there have been substantial developments in attracting Foreign Direct Investment in Uttar Pradesh, the media outlets have made a mountain of a molehill. This article from The Economic Times has gone to lengths to prove this point by displaying pretty bar graphs over wrong parameters only to incorporate UP in the top 10. Here is a plot from the article that gives false implications by ranking states based on the cumulative number of projects with no hint about the worth of each project. It is as absurd as a person owning two Audi cars being ranked lower than a person owning four WagonR.

The correct parameter would be to look at the total FDI equity inflows for each state. Let us look at the correct position of the state in terms of FDI equity inflows in the images shown below.

UP was ranked 9th for October 2019- September 2020 amounting to only 1% of India’s share.

But despite the statements of Ajay Bisht, UP’s ranking slipped from 9th to 11th for October 2019- September 2021 amounting to 0.66% of India’s share.

Upon investigating the sources of the article of The Economic Times, we found that it used Projects Today as a source. An intensive reading of the survey results published by Projects Today showed that UP was not in top 5 in most preferred destination of private project promoters in FY20.

• Maharashtra ₹1,06,922 crores
• Gujarat ₹1,02,346 crores
• Odisha ₹50,000 crores
• Rajasthan ₹44,857 crores
• West Bengal ₹35,299 crores

Analysis of Niti Aayog’s Sustainable Development Goals and Ease of Doing Business by Observer Research Foundation place UP at an Embryonic Stage.

This comes as a hefty shove to anyone who previously believed Ajay Bisht’s claim that UP has attained a leading position in the country as an investor friendly destination in last five years .

3. UP’s Per Capita Income has doubled- Ajay Bisht is a seasoned player when it comes to playing with incorrect figures in his public speeches. He said the per capita income in 2015-16, when the SP was in power, was ₹43,000, which has now increased to ₹95,000. Let’s, for a moment, ignore the figures but focus on the time period he used for the comparison. It is to be noted that Akhilesh term was until 2016-17. The only reason Ajay Bisht ignored 2016-17 was because during this time, the per capita income came around ₹52,000. And now if we look at RBI’s data for per capita income (current prices), it is around ₹65,000 and not ₹95,000. [Source] This figure is ₹41,000 if we take per capita income (constant prices) into account. [Source]

4. Shaved number of Covid deaths- We believe that death is not a pixel on the graph but a devastated family. While there are many pictures to show that Ajay Bisht lacked the general courtesy to allow the dead even their final rites, we have data to prove that this self-proclaimed champion of Sanatan Dharma has scrupulously and intentionally painted a pretty picture of deaths void of the ugly blotches of actual figures that could have spoken volumes about the collapse of healthcare in UP under Ajay Bisht.

We, at Sanely Written, performed a Benford Analysis over the reported Covid deaths data of UP. Benford Analysis is done in data science to detect fake and artificial data. We found a stark difference between expected and actual values. Thus, it cements our suspicion that Covid deaths data have been artificially produced.

The idea of putting forward this piece before you was not to call out the double standards of Ajay Bisht, for if voters started voting candidates by judging the content of their characters, there would not be a single soul who could sit in State or Centre’s assemblies. We did this to let you know that you are under no obligation to give your precious vote to a candidate based on his shadow.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.

Mahatma Gandhi