When you win the kind of thumping majority that the BJP did in the Uttar Pradesh elections earlier this year, the chief minister visiting a major city in the state would hardly qualify as a snippet, let alone front-page news.
However, UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's decision to visit Noida on Saturday, and later again on December 25, has aroused much interest and curiosity. This is because Adityanath is breaking a pattern that all his predecessors since the 1980s, except Mayawati, have observed: none of them visited Noida given a belief that a sitting chief minister who went to Noida would lose his (or her) chair.
The superstition reportedly started with Veer Bahadur Singh, who was asked to step down by the Congress leadership after visiting Noida in 1988. The popular belief, at least for some, is that N.D. Tiwari (1989), Mayawati (losing power in 1997) and Kalyan Singh (1999) were out of office after they visited Noida.
As the belief has persisted, subsequent chief ministers, such as Rajnath Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav, refrained from visiting Noida, with Rajnath inaugurating the DND flyover from the Delhi side in 2001.
Even Akhilesh Yadav, usually portrayed as a next-generation, 'progressive' politician, did not go to Noida during his term as chief minister from 2012 to 2017. He inaugurated the Yamuna Expressway in Noida via remote control from Lucknow and had the family of Mohammad Akhlaq, the Dadri lynching victim, brought from Noida to Lucknow to meet him!
Adityanath is visiting Noida on Saturday to review preparations for the prime minister's visit on December 25. On December 25, the 'Magenta' line of the Delhi Metro would be inaugurated by the prime minister. Media reports claimed that Adityanath was advised against going to Noida, but he overruled it.
(With agency inputs)
