At Barabanki meet, he backed idea of India-Pak-Bangla bloc

LUCKNOW: In 1965, when veteran socialist leader Rajnath Sharma formed a trust to mobilise support for a confederation of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it received strong support from George Fernandes.
Sharma, based in UP's Barabanki and inspired by Ram Manohar Lohia, had formed the socio-political outfit-Gandhi Jayanti Samaroh Trust-and had begun organizing seminars and conferences to end the bitterness and soured relations among the three countries and to make them work together to annihilate poverty, illiteracy and communalism.
He got together thinkers, poets, writers from the three countries to express their views. Fernandes attended these seminars in Barabanki as well as in Delhi and had appealed that the "proposed confederation of the three countries-India, Pakistan and Bangladesh-mooted by Lohia and supported by Mahatma Gandhi, would not only reduce substantial expenditure on defence preparedness of the countries but also play a key role in eradication of poverty and other social ills plaguing them."
"At times, when Fernandes was not able to attend, he would collect funds from their personal friends for the seminars and conferences," recalls Rajnath Sharma, who has been holding these seminars for over five decades.
George Fernandes had very strong emotional attachment with Lohia and he would often visit his wife Laila Kabir at his native Akbarpur (now Ambedkar Nagar). On his return, Fernandes would stay at Sharma's house in Barabanki and discuss about the confederation of three nations.
In 2004, Fernandes had visited Barabanki to unveil Gandhi's bust set up on the Trust campus.