Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav was halted on the stairs of an aircraft at Lucknow airport to prevent him from visiting Allahabad University, triggering protests across Uttar Pradesh and attracting condemnation from a united Opposition.
The backlash that followed set the stage for the chanting of “chowkidar chor hai”, a slogan popularised by Congress president Rahul Gandhi to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In Allahabad, police baton-charged protesters.
The former chief minister had arrived at Lucknow airport to board a chartered plane in the morning but was stopped by an additional district magistrate and a policeman, both smiling, who had positioned themselves at the door of the aircraft.
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath later cited the possibility of violence involving students’ unions had Akhilesh gone to Allahabad University. The annual function of the university union had already been called off after campus violence on Sunday.
Adityanath claimed that the Allahabad administration had requested the Samajwadi leader to cancel the programme in view of the Kumbh Mela.
Video footage captured minutes after Akhilesh had turned back from the aircraft shows the ADM, Vaibhav Mishra, trying to bodily stop Akhilesh on the tarmac, where a posse of policemen and the Samajwadi leader’s guards are also present.
One of the guards pushes the ADM aside and Akhilesh is seen demanding that he be shown written orders stopping him from proceeding to Allahabad.
Mishra says he has the papers but despite repeated demands from Akhilesh, is not seen producing any.
Akhilesh tweeted from the airport lounge and later issued a statement and held a media conference to “explain the remote control politics of two and a half men”.
“I was prevented from boarding the airplane without any written orders. Currently detained at Lucknow airport,” he tweeted close to noon.
In the media release issued from the airport at 12.45pm, after Adityanath had held a news conference accusing the Samajwadi Party of “anarchist and destructive activities”, Akhilesh alleged that the BJP and its associated organisations were creating “a monochrome India” and betraying “the hopes and aspirations of crores of young people”.
“Their attack on institutions by filling them with people whose loyalties lie with an organisation that harbours people who celebrate the Mahatma’s murderer is an attack on our democracy,” Akhilesh’s statement said, adding that the chief minister had cited possible law and order problems “to hide their nervousness because our youths have had enough”.
On Akhilesh’s attack on “two and a half men”, Samajwadi leaders conjectured that he was referring to Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and Adityanath. Some others felt one of the targets was the RSS, not Adityanath. Journalist and former NDA minister Arun Shourie, who had used the phrase earlier, had refereed to Modi, Shah and an “in-house lawyer”.
Samajwadi members shouted slogans in the Assembly, where the state budget was to be discussed. Most of the Samajwadi members left for the airport. BSP members continued the protest, alleging “highhandedness of the BJP government”.
At Allahabad University, Samajwadi students’ wing members took out a procession from the union hall to the Balson Crossing in the city, chanting: “Gali gali mein shor hai, chowkidar chor hai (The cry on the streets is that the watchman is a thief).”
Some students allegedly attacked the police, burnt a civic truck, thrashed bystanders and vandalised banners and posters of the state government. The police resorted to a lathicharge in which Dharmendra Yadav, the Samajwadi MP from Badaun and cousin of Akhilesh, suffered head injuries.
Police baton-charge Samajwadi Party workers who were blocking a road on Tuesday during the protest in Allahabad. (PTI)
