New Delhi: The Yogi Adityanath government has said there are nearly 34 lakh unemployed persons in the state now, with the number increasing by over 12.5 lakh from the figure two years ago.UP’s labour minister Swami Prasad Maurya in a written answer at the state assembly on Friday said 33.93 lakh unemployed persons were registered as on February 7, 2020 with an online portal run by the labour department. This was a 60% hike in the number of unemployed in the state from the figure of 21.39 lakh such persons registered on the same portal as on June 30, 2018, which was also cited by Maurya in a written answer in the assembly session in 2018.While Maurya’s answer did not give reasons for the major increase, a functionary of the state BJP told ET that one reason may be that more unemployed youths have been registering on the state’s portal in the last two years as they have been expecting jobs after the rollout of the Investor Summit and Defence Corridor project. CM Yogi Adityanath has been promising that lakhs of jobs will come to the state as companies have promised to invest. However, SP spokesperson Udaiveer Singh told ET that the “sharply increasing unemployment” in UP was a result of a non-conducive atmosphere for investment under the present regime. “No new investment has come despite lot of talk from the CM. All investment came under Akhilesh Yadav’s regime. The rising law and order disturbances in UP have now added to the crisis. The economic slowdown reflects in these unemployment figures of UP,” Singh said. The National Statistical Office (NSO) had earlier said UP had the highest unemployment rate in urban areas, at nearly 16 in the quarter ended December 2018, compared to the all-India urban unemployment rate of 9.9%.The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said the average unemployment in UP grew to 9.9 per cent in 2019. The UP Labour Department meanwhile claims that it got jobs for 1.03 lakh unemployed youth in 2018-19 through job fairs, up from 63,152 jobs generated through the job fairs in 2017-18.