Defiant Akhilesh takes Yogi head-on, garlands JP's bust outside house

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav on Friday garlanded a bust of Jayaprakash Narayan mounted atop a vehicle outside his residence where hundreds of party workers had gathered after the authorities blocked his visit to the JP International Centre citing security concerns.

The late JP, as the socialist leader and fierce critic of the Emergency was known, has emerged as the latest centre of the tussle between the ruling BJP and the opposition party.

Last year, too, Yadav had to climb over the gate of the centre to garland JP's statue.

Yadav also appealed to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to withdraw support to the NDA, saying that the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh stopped 'Samajwadis' from paying tributes to Narayan, a socialist ideologue, and asserting that the JD(U) chief owed his political emergence to the JP movement.

In the morning, he slammed the BJP government in the state for putting up barricades near his house to prevent 'Samajwadis' from visiting the site and garlanding JP Narayan's statue on his birth anniversary.

SP workers had assembled outside Yadav's residence as ambiguity remained over his scheduled visit to the centre. At around 10.30 am, a bust of Narayan, mounted on a vehicle, was garlanded by Yadav on the road packed with SP workers, several of them donning red caps and raising slogans and party flags.

"Today, standing on the road, we are paying tributes to the 'Jan Nayak'. This government wants to stop us from garlanding but we have done it here on the road itself," he told the gathering.

He also said bamboo barricades would not have been able to stop party workers from visiting the centre if it was not a festival day.

Yadav had visited the centre on Thursday night and lambasted the Yogi Adityanath government for blocking its main gate with tin sheets, apparently to prevent entry. "The people of BJP are destructive. Give them anything good and they will destroy it. They stopped us, Samajwadi people, in the past also, but since this is the ninth day of Navratras, think about the 'adharm' they are doing," he said.

"The Chief Minister of Bihar (Nitish Kumar) also keeps talking about Jayaprakash Narayan ji from time to time, in fact, he has emerged (as a politician) from JP's movement itself. This is a chance that he has got to withdraw support from a government which is stopping Samajwadis from remembering Jayaprakash on his anniversary," Yadav stated.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister alleged that the memorial at the centre was under covers because of a "conspiracy to sell it". "Imagine, there is a government which wants to sell a museum," he alleged.

Earlier, the Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) told Yadav that his visit to the centre was "not advisable" as it cited security concerns due to the ongoing construction at the site.

In a letter referencing their correspondence dated October 8, the LDA noted that Yadav, who is accorded Z-plus security, intended to pay homage to the statue. "It is to be informed that the Engineering Department, Lucknow Development Authority, has provided a report regarding the updated status of the work site, in which the JP Narayan Convention Centre project is still under construction.

"The construction material is kept in an unplanned manner and due to the rainy season there is a possibility of the presence of unwanted living creatures. The site has not been found suitable for garlanding/visiting from the security point of view of Akhilesh Yadav, former chief minister, who has Z-Plus security," the LDA said in its letter dated October 10.

Yadav took to social media and shared video clips and pictures of the deployment of security personnel, including police and rapid action force, with barricades near his house.