The famous ‘Noida jinx’ kept Uttar Pradesh chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav from visiting the city – for the fourth time in a row. Yadav inaugurated Nasscom’s Noida headquarters from a five-star hotel in New Delhi on Friday.
The curious jinx, that any CM who visits Noida or Greater Noida would lose his seat of power, has kept most chief ministers away from this industrial belt, which is the pride of UP, for about two decades now.
Akhilesh, an environmental engineer, rode to power projecting himself as a young, dynamic and tech-savvy leader. However, his admirers must have been disappointed when he first gave in to the superstition by preferring to inaugurate the 165-km Yamuna Expressway in August last year by pressing a button from Lucknow. Again, on April 2, Akhilesh inaugurated development projects worth Rs3,300 crore in Noida and Greater Noida through a remote control from his Lucknow bungalow. In fact, he even stayed away from Noida while it hosted the prestigious Asian Development Bank meet in May this year.
Akhilesh’s fear is not wholly unfounded as his father has experienced the ‘jinx’ first hand. Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had visited Noida as UP chief minister in 1995, lost the polls that were held immediately thereafter.
The jinx has in the past caught up with several chief ministers, including Veer
Bahadur Singh, Narayan Dutt Tiwari, Kalyan Singh and Mayawati, who lost their chairs soon after visiting Noida. In fact, Mayawati, during the last stages of her five-year tenure as chief minister, had tried to break the jinx by visiting Noida in 2011 to inaugurate the Dalit Smarak Sthal. Within a few months, her party lost power in Lucknow in the 2012 UP assembly elections.
