Ambedkarnagar strives to preserve Lohia legacy as SP fights to retain seat

AMBEDKARNAGAR: While the Shahzadpur market of Ambedkarnagar bustles with activity, silence pervades this pharmacy store where its owner Gajanand Yadav sits pondering over a register scribbled with rare details about socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia.
Yadav has his back towards the entrance of the market where a dust-laden statue of Lohia stands amid fruit-sellers.To one side of his shop is a narrow bylane that leads to a small, deserted house where Lohia stayed and studied. “You want to know about Lohiaji? I will tell you,” Yadav says, flips through the register randomly. “He was a Marwari...,” he begins, unfolding a cache of details about Lohia as a child and as a young man who left for Calcutta (now Kolkata) and then for Germany to study economics.
The 60-something Yadav is actually the sole bearer of information about the socialist leader who went on to become the idolized figure for many political parties, including the ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. “Humnien ye sab isliye likh liya ki agar koi unke baare mein poochhe to hum bata sakein...warna sab bhool jayenge...,” he says.
Yadav’s desperate attempt to preserve the fading memories of the socialist leader bore fruit a month ago when Ritesh Agarwal, an SP functionary from Firozabad, came to the locality to shoot a film on Lohia. “They spent the whole day here...marking the locality and the house where he (Lohia) lived...we don’t know what they would do next,” he says. Agarwal’s visit was followed by a team of social scientists from Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, New Delhi. “They too wanted to know about him,” he adds.
Lohia legacy, as preserved in Akbarpur assembly constituency, manifest itself in the 2012 assembly elections when SP made a clean sweep. Today, the residents of Shahzadpur are a worried lot. “Mulayam Singh Yadav ke parivar mein jhagda bahut galat hua...ab pata nahi kya hoga,” said Premchand Sharma, a SP supporter.
Locals also recall how the emergence of Akhilesh Yadav as the face of SP had turned things heavily in favour of the party in all constituencies of Ambedkarnagar which, otherwise, happened to be the fort of Mayawati’s BSP. BSP state president Ram Achal Rajbhar who had won the Akbarpur seat on four occasions did not contest last time. In his place, Mayawati fielded Sanjay Kumar who was defeated by SP’s Ram Murti Verma.
Verma, locals says, not only cornered the Kurmi OBC vote but cut through other caste barriers to romp home with a huge victory margin of close to 28,000 votes. He is again in the fray as a candidate of SP-Congress alliance and is up against Rajbhar who is strongly backed by the Dalit vote base of Mayawati.
The SP, which stormed to power riding on an ‘Akhilesh wave’ in 2012, appears to evoke Lohia legacy this time. It was only last year on June 12, when Akhilesh got the Lohia Bhawan renovated and a six-feet bronze statue of the leader installed. The bhawan, situated on one side of the airstrip in Ambedkarnagar, however, wears a deserted look. “We clean the statue daily, garland it and go back,” says a caretaker.