As Atal travels last mile, admirers come along

LUCKNOW: When Union home minister Rajnath Singh had held a mega event marking the fourth year anniversary of the NDA government in Lucknow in May this year, he couldn’t stop heaping praises on Atal Behari Vajpayee and his contribution to Lucknow as an MP.
So did PM Narendra Modi when he chose Lucknow as the event location for celebrating the third anniversary of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Amrut (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) in June.
On Thursday, as Rajnath alighted from the Air Force plane at Amausi airport, he thrice rubbed his moist eyes, each time wiping his tears while firmly holing the urn containing Vajpayee’s ashes close to his chest.
The mood was sombre but UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, state chief Mahendra Nath Pandey and Union minister Manoj Sinha slowly walked towards Rajnath for a fraternal hug. Such has been the abiding love that Vajpayee enjoyed among the UP unit of the BJP. Even as Lucknow witnessed heavy downpour, thousands joined the BJP senior ministers in bidding their local hero a goodbye.
While some took turns to grab a megaphone to sing Vajpayee’s poems, there were those who had brought their sepia-tone photographs with him during his early days at Balrampur, Mathura and DAV college in Kanpur.
A digital van set up by the UP government was used to display his photographs and selected speeches during Pokhran test, Kargil war and joint address with then US and Pakistan presidents Bill Clinton and Pervez Musharraf, respectively. The hearse van, dressed up with his electioneering photographs, took a 45-km marathon route, with as many as 11 state ministers, including Rita Joshi, Satish Mahana, Dinesh Sharma, Brajesh Pathak and Suresh Khanna, waiting at each iconic location of the city like Kanpur Road, Alambagh, Charbagh, Burlington crossing, Novelty theatre, Hazratganj, BJP headquarters leading up to Jhulelal Vatika.
School and college kids, wearing jerseys and t-shirts bearing Vajpayee’s caricatures thronged the roads leading from the airport to the city, leaving traffic snarls at multiple locations and even crowding the Lucknow Metro. Vajpayee’s last hurrah and BJP’s recent electoral success meant that immersion had an encore from 400-plus MLAs and 70-plus MPs from the Hindi heartland, coming from as far Mahoba and Saharanpur and Bahraich, turning for the grand event.
UP’s Vidhan Sabha and Lok Bhawan were decorated with larger than life digital display screens carrying Vajpayee’s poems and white boards seeking signature messages as tribute to him.
“I had only met him six times but we are proud that we could be here for him today,” said BJP MLA from Banda, Raj Karan Kabir.
“I wasn’t even in the party when he was the PM, but he was the reason for me to join the party. I am here to pay the respect,” said Braj Bhushan, an MLA from Mahoba in Bundelkhand.
Keeping up with his affable nature he had during his heyday, the highlight of the Vajpayee’s last journey in Lucknow was reserved with the attendance from the opposition, Muslim clerics, advocates and renowned medical practitioners.