A single word has ignited a full-blown political firestorm between two neighbouring states. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Saturday, 24 October 2026, issued a sharp public rebuke of Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav, calling his reported description of Uttarakhand residents as 'ghuspaithiya' (infiltrators) an insult to the state's identity, its people, and the blood spilled during its statehood struggle.

The word that drew first blood

In his post, Dhami declared: 'Uttarakhand devbhoomi bhi hai aur veerbhoomi bhi' — 'Uttarakhand is both sacred land and land of the brave.' He said the state has given the nation saints, soldiers, and individuals devoted to national service, and that calling its people infiltrators is an affront to its pride and its hard-won identity.

Dhami did not stop at the present. He reached back three decades to remind his audience of a defining trauma: when Akhilesh Yadav's father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, was Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in the 1990s, police opened fire on Uttarakhand statehood agitators at Rampur Tiraha in Muzaffarnagar. The implication was blunt — the son now insults the very people whose ancestors were shot under his father's watch.

Rampur Tiraha: the wound that never fully closed

The October 1994 firing at Rampur Tiraha remains one of the most painful chapters in Uttarakhand's collective memory. Agitators demanding a separate hill state were met with police action that killed several protesters. The event galvanised the movement and is still invoked as a symbol of Uttar Pradesh's political establishment treating hill communities as expendable.

Uttarakhand was eventually carved out of UP on 9 November 2000, after years of sustained agitation, political negotiation, and no small amount of sacrifice. For many residents, that history is not a history lesson — it is lived inheritance.

Congress pulled into the crossfire

Dhami's post escalated beyond a two-party clash by directly targeting Indian National Congress, which is currently allied with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. He posed two pointed questions to the party: does Congress endorse Akhilesh Yadav's remark? Is it acceptable to Congress that the people of Uttarakhand be labelled infiltrators?

'Congress owes the people of Devbhoomi an answer,' Dhami wrote — a framing designed to force the opposition into a corner before any formal response could be crafted. With assembly elections due in 2027 in Uttarakhand, the BJP's calculation appears clear: make every opposition statement about the state a test of whether that opposition respects Uttarakhand's identity at all.

What comes next for both parties

Congress and Samajwadi Party spokespeople have yet to issue a formal response. The BJP, which governs Uttarakhand, has historically used the statehood movement's memory as a powerful electoral asset — especially when UP-based party leaders make statements that can be cast as dismissive of hill communities. Whether Akhilesh Yadav clarifies, doubles down, or stays silent will shape the trajectory of this exchange. Either way, CM Dhami has ensured the remark does not quietly disappear — and that the families of 1994 are watching.