Lucknow, Apr 19 (IANS): The Yogi Adityanath government, on Tuesday, allotted residential and agricultural plots and houses to 63 Hindu families who had migrated from East Pakistan in 1970.

Speaking on the occasion, Yogi Adityanath said that though the number of families was 63, the number of persons who would benefit was 400.

He said that it was the vision of the Centre that would now allow these displaced Hindu families to get the advantage of government schemes. He also slammed the previous governments for not caring about them.

According to a government spokesman, these refugees had settled in different parts of the state.

"Those who stayed back have now been empowered by the Yogi government in a fresh move," the spokesman added.

Two years ago, the Yogi government had started collecting primary data of those expelled from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and living in Uttar Pradesh. Till 2020, over 37,000 Bangladeshi and Pakistani refugees were identified in Pilibhit district. The data was being collected to grant them Indian citizenship under the citizenship act.

Earlier, in January too, Yogi Adityanath had announced that his government has accommodated the expelled Hindus from Pakistan and Bangladesh in the land that the state government freed from encroachers.

"Hindus, who were living in Meerut for decades after facing expulsion from Pakistan and Bangladesh, could not afford to build their own houses or buy lands. We have given 63 such Bengali Hindu families two acres of land and 200 square yards for housing per family in Kanpur Dehat. These lands were freed from land grabbers," he had said.

Yogi Adityanath earned the name of "bulldozer baba" after several illegal encroachments in the state were razed, and the move was linked to the chief minister's model of governance.