Lucknow: Yogi Adityanath on Monday sought to deflect his minister and ally Om Prakash Rajbhar's comment that the state and central governments had ignored the poor just as Ram had forgotten the monkeys that fought for him.

"Some people are very scared of monkeys... a monkey had set fire to Ravan's Lanka," a sarcastic chief minister told a gathering of ministers, officials and BJP workers on his government's first anniversary. "And I can say today that this monkey (an apparent reference to himself) must burn the Lanka of corruption, vices and goonda raj. Nobody should have any doubt about it."

Adityanath didn't name Rajbhar but said his government had provided free electricity and houses to lakhs of poor people in the state.

He said he was taking the state on the path of development and working against the anarchy that "prevailed during the tenures of previous governments".

Asked by reporters about Rajbhar's remarks, health minister and state government spokesperson Siddharth Nath Singh said: "Instead of making statements in public, the minister should talk about it in cabinet meetings."

Rajbhar, backward class welfare minister and leader of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, which has four MLAs and a non-Yadav OBC vote bank, continued his attack on the BJP and its government on Monday.

He alleged the BJP was power-drunk after winning 325 seats in a House of 403 in last year's Assembly elections. He threatened to "boycott the Rajya Sabha elections".

"The BJP is ditching us. It didn't discuss its candidates for the Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats, either, with me. That was why the people defeated the party (in these two parliamentary by-elections)," Rajbhar said. "I would have added 30,000 votes in each of the two constituencies and ensured its victory."

While the margin of defeat was 21,000 in Gorakhpur, it was over 59,600 in Phulpur.

Rajbhar ridiculed Adityanath for celebrating his government's anniversary, saying: "What do they have to boast about? The BJP is talking a lot about a Ram temple but has dumped issues of the poor."

Rajbhar has often publicly accused the government of non-functioning, but his proximity to BJP president Amit Shah has forced Adityanath to swallow the barbs.

On Sunday, however, he went farther than before and alleged that corruption had reached its peak under the Adityanath government, and that the chief minister ignored all his complaints.

Virtually rebelling against the coalition partner, he had appealed to the poor to never again vote for "rich parties", among which he named the BJP along with the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress.

"The governments in Delhi and Lucknow ignored the poor who had voted for them, just like Ram forgot the poor monkeys that had fought for him," Rajbhar told a rally.

"The god (Ram) flew back to Ayodhya on the Pushpak viman (aircraft), leaving behind the monkeys... the way the leaders you voted to power flew to Delhi and Lucknow to rule over you."