Will Akhilesh Yadav Witness the Commercial Run of His Dream Project?

Lucknow: Not many of us in the 21st century believe in superstition, but with politicians it is a different ballgame.

Talking in particular of Uttar Pradesh politics, it is believed that if a sitting CM goes to Noida, then he/she will not win the next elections.

Even Akhilesh Yadav did not go to Noida due to this superstition and inaugurated all the development schemes of Noida from his Lucknow office. The superstition is so strong that no sitting chief minister of the state has been to Noida in the last 28 years and if someone has dared then he/she has lost the power game.

In the year 2001 when Rajnath Singh was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, he inaugurated Noida DND flyover from the place where it was ending on Delhi side. Then in the year 2006 when Mulayam Singh Yadav, the sitting CM then, didn’t go to Noida even after the famous Nithari incident. BSP supremo tried to break the jinx in the year 2011 but she lost 2012 elections.

Now the buzz is of the new ‘metro’ superstition, in political lanes it is believed that if government of a particular state starts a metro rail project, then that party loses elections. The phenomenon is strongly believed by the examples of five Metro Rail projects in Kolkata, Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Jaipur where Governments have laid foundation of the Metro Rail Projects and lost the next elections badly.

Kolkata Metro Project was prepared on 1st June 1972, that time it was a Congress government in the state. The then CM of the state Siddharth Shankar laid the foundation of Kolkata Metro in the presence of then PM of India, Indira Gandhi on 29th December 1972. Post which President Rule came into play on 30th April 1977 and finally the Metro Rail was completed and flagged off by new CM Jyoti Basu on 24th October 1984.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Board was constituted in May 1995 and work commenced from 1st October 1998, at that time BJP was ruling Delhi. But on 3rd December 1998 Sheila Dixit became the CM from Congress party and finally the first Metro Rail was flagged off on 25th December 2002.

Talking about Jaipur Metro, the first phase of work started on 13th Nov 2010 and the then CM Ashok Gehlot flagged off the Metro on 18th Sep 2013. In the next elections Gehlot lost the elections and BJP came in power.

In the state of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh, who was the chief minister at that time, laid the foundation of Mumbai Metro in the presence of the then PM of India, Manmohan Singh. Though the work was completed under the party, Congress lost to BJP in the next elections.

Finally the Lucknow Metro, which Akhilesh Yadav claims is the fastest built Metro in the country. After laying the foundation in the year 2013, Akhilesh even did a trial run on 1st December 2016. The commercial run is proposed on 26th March 2017 by the Lucknow Metro authorities. But going by the above examples it is a bit difficult to say who will be the witness to the commercial run of Lucknow Metro as a chief minister of the state.