LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav was stopped on Friday from visiting Jayaprakash Narayan International Centre (JPNIC) in Lucknow on security grounds on the socialist ideologue’s birth anniversary, prompting the SP president to garland a bust of the Loknayak (people’s hero) temporarily placed outside his house amid an outcry against Uttar Pradesh’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) govt.
Stopped after the administration put up barricades near his house and deployed large contingents of police, Akhilesh told hundreds of SP workers that BJP was against honouring heroes of the freedom struggle as its functionaries did not participate in the movement. He also urged Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar to withdraw support to BJP-led NDA at Centre.
“Nitish himself is a product of his (JP’s) movement. This is the time for Nitish to withdraw support from the central govt which is not allowing the socialists to pay tribute to JP,” Akhilesh said after paying tribute at the makeshift bust brought from SP head office and placed on a mini-truck.
The row was redolent of a similar showdown last year when Akhilesh had scaled JPNIC’s gates to garland a statue of JP. JPNIC was conceived in 2012 by SP founder and Akhilesh’s father Mulayam Singh Yadav as a multifunctional venue on the lines of India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. Akhilesh was then UP chief minister.
The project in Lucknow’s Gomtinagar was stalled in 2017 after BJP unseated SP and ever since it has been “under construction”.
This time, a letter sent by the state-run Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) to Akhilesh on Thursday “advised” him not to visit JPNIC as there was a lot of construction material lying all over the place. Also, due to rainy season, there was a possibility of wild creatures at the site and since Akhilesh has Z category security, it would not be advisable for him to visit the venue, the letter said. LDA is the custodian of JPNIC.
At JPNIC, LDA had installed steel plates at the entrance to deny entry to anyone, acting possibly after Akhilesh visited the site late on Thursday and declared that he would return on Friday to mark JP’s birth anniversary.
JPNIC project, then estimated at Rs 850 crore, comprised a 11-floor structure with state-of-the-art auditoriums, a museum on socialist movement in India, lawn tennis and badminton courts as well as art galleries.
JPNIC was the only structure in Lucknow then to have a helipad.