Samajwadi Party Chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday accused the Uttar Pradesh government of lying about the number of teachers who lost their lives during the recent panchayat poll duty to avoid giving them compensation. "To avoid giving compensation, the ruthless BJP government in Uttar Pradesh is now lying that only three teachers have died during election duty while the figures given by the teachers' body is more than 1,000," Yadav said in a tweet in Hindi.

"The BJP government is creating a 'world record of big lies'. How would the heartless BJP members realise the grief of these families?'' he further said, and attached a newspaper report. Earlier, the president of the Uttar Pradesh Praathmik Shikshak Sangh, Dinesh Chandra Sharma, had said that 1,621 teachers and workers of the Basic Education Department have died since the first week of April following the outbreak of the second wave of COVID-19.

Of these 1,621 deaths, more than 90 per cent of the teachers were on panchayat election duty, he had said, while also demanding Rs 1 crore to be paid to the kin of deceased teachers and workers as financial assistance. However, Satish Chandra Dwivedi, the UP minister of state (independent charge) for basic education, had said that all these deaths cannot be attributed to elections and according to government data, only three teachers died due to COVID.