New Delhi, Jul 22 (PTI) The Congress launched an all-out attack on the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday over the killing of a journalist in Ghaziabad and said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath should resign if he is unable to control law and order.

The opposition party also alleged that the BHaratiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttar Pradesh has a "soft-benevolent attitude towards crime" and provides political patronage to criminals, which have emboldened such elements across the state.

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Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said journalist Vikram Joshi was shot at in front of his daughters for opposing the molestation of his niece and he died on Wednesday.

"'Jungle raj' (lawlessness) has become so prevalent in UP that after complaining, the common man is afraid of miscreants. The BJP government has failed on the issue of crime like the previous governments," she said in a tweet in Hindi.

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"The chief minister should resign of his own accord if he is unable to control the rising crimes in UP," the Congress said on its official Twitter handle.

It also wondered whether one can expect good governance from someone who has withdrawn serious cases against himself. "How can we expect him to govern?" the opposition party asked.

"Instead of acting against criminals, the Uttar Pradesh government comes down heavily on those in the opposition, who raise their voices against these acts of crime," Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate said.

She said Joshi reached out to the Uttar Pradesh police, who did not act upon his complaint till he was shot at on Monday night.

This, Shrinate said, was not an isolated incident as crime has become a routine affair in Uttar Pradesh and "it is common to crush the voices of those who raise it against oppression".

She said the latest available data shows that 4,018 people were murdered in the state in 2018, which means 11 murders every day.

The Congress leader said even the Supreme Court took a very strict view of the police encounter of gangster Vikas Dubey. "It shows that the entire system has failed and this is not one incidence, it puts the entire credibility of the Uttar Pradesh government at stake. But does it make any difference to the Adityanath government?" she asked.

"There is one question that will continue to haunt this government -- why is the chief minister quiet? How can he silently preside over the death and collapse of law and order in Uttar Pradesh? Does he have a plan or even a will to crack down on corruption as well as lawlessness?" Shrinate asked.

She said Uttar Pradesh, which accounts for one-sixth of the country's population, did not elect Adityanath to witness the crime rate increase manifold and it should be his first and only priority to ensure the safety of citizens.

"If he is incapable of doing so, he can simply resign. At no cost will we stand as mute spectators as Uttar Pradesh turns into a 'Aparadh Pradesh'," Shrinate said.

She alleged that instead of attacking and breaking the politician-criminal nexus in the state, the Adityanath government preferred a "fake encounter" of a dreaded gangster like Dubey.

"But how will the chief minister answer the families of those eight slain police officials? Why was Dubey's name not included in the list of 25 most-wanted criminals? How will he explain that a section of his own police was hand in glove with the criminal? Who in Adityanath's government was trying to protect Dubey and giving him political patronage? This government cannot escape these raging questions," Shrinate said.

She said it is almost a curse to be a woman in Uttar Pradesh, as one has seen in Unnao, where a rape victim was burnt alive.

Dubey, the prime accused in the killing of eight policemen in Kanpur's Bikru village on July 3, was gunned down by the Uttar Pradesh police in an encounter on July 10.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)