Akhilesh promises a grand Vishnu temple near Etawah

LUCKNOW: Akhilesh Yadav has announced that he will build a giant Vishnu Temple — on the pattern of Cambodia’s Angkor Wat — in a 2000-acre land in Etawah if Samajwadi Party comes to power.
Recently, Uttar Pradesh deputy CM Keshav Maurya’s has claimed that the Centre might bring in a legislation for the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
Akhilesh’s announcement is seen as an attempt to counter BJP, if it plays up the temple card in 2019.Ram is considered to be an incarnation of Lord Vishnu.
Senior leaders say Akhilesh’s idea of Vishnu Nagar and a temple is in line with SP’s policy of keeping in mind sentiments of people of all faiths and beliefs.
“When our government had released funds for the construction of boundary walls of graveyards, BJP called it appeasement politics. The party should now praise our national president’s plan,” a senior SP leader told TOI on Thursday.
Akhilesh will unveil a 50-foot-tall statue of Lord Krishna in Saifai before 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
BJP leaders, however, claimed that Akhilesh’s plan showed uneasiness in SP due to growing popularity of the saffron party both in the state as well as at the Centre.
BJP: SP should not talk about building a temple
Referring to the firing on kar sevaks when Mulayam Singh Yadav was CM, BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi said SP should not talk about building a temple.
Akhikesh said there was enough land near Lion Safari in Etawah to build a Vishnu Nagar having a giant Vishnu temple. When SP comes back to power in UP, it will send a team of experts and officials to Cambodia to study the Angkor Wat so that a temple can come up in Vishnu Nagar on similar lines, he told a news agency.Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument in the world, spread across 402 acres, in Cambodia. It was originally built as a Hindu temple dedicated to Vishnu in the early 12th Century. Gradually, it has transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th Century.