Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Friday accused the Yogi Adityanath government of planning to sell the half-constructed Jayaprakash Narayan International Centre (JPNIC) to a private company.

Earlier, the SP had slammed the state government for preventing Akhilesh from taking out a 4km procession from his home to the abandoned JPNIC to garland the socialist leader’s statue on his 122nd birth anniversary.

“The Bharatiya Janata Party dislikes JP because he was socialist and secular,” Akhilesh told a gathering of his supporters at the gate of his house here on Friday morning.

The SP members were supposed to start the procession at 10am but police and paramilitary force were deployed both in front of Akhilesh’s house and the JPNIC.

The SP chief had reached the JPNIC gate on Thursday night but tin sheds had been erected around the building to prevent anybody from entering the premises.

“It is the second consecutive year when the BJP government didn’t let me go there to pay tribute to the socialist leader. I have come to know that they are going to sell it to a private firm,” Akhilesh claimed.

The construction of the JPNIC began between 2012 and 2017 for research on socialism during Akhilesh’s tenure as the chief minister. A museum on Jayaprakash Narayan was also proposed there but the work was stopped after Adityanath became the chief minister in 2017.

As the SP workers refused to disperse from near Akhilesh’s house, the Lucknow administration brought a bust of Jayaprakash Narayan in an open van for the SP president to garland it.

Although the government officers avoided making any statement, an officer of the Lucknow Development Authority said on the condition of anonymity: “The JPNIC has been closed for the last many years and tall grasses have grown there. We had told the SP chief not to go there because of the likely presence of snakes. It is wrong to say that the government will sell it.”

Some observers claim that Jayaprakash Narayan had propelled the popularity of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — the ideological fountainhead of the BJP. He had allowed the entry of the RSS in his 1970s movement called “Total Revolution” against the alleged misrule of the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government. Later, Jayaprakash Narayan was accused of playing into the hands of the Right-wing forces. However, the current RSS leaders disown him because he was essentially against religious politics.