ALIGARH/BULANDSHAHR: Thousands were already there, waiting, when the mortal remains of former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalwart Kalyan Singh were brought to a stadium in Aligarh, a city which went into mourning on an otherwise joyous occasion of Raksha Bandhan.
Slogans of ‘Jai Shree Ram’ and ‘Babu ji Amar Rahen’ rent the air of city’s Maharani Ahilyabai Holkar Stadium on Sunday evening as soon as the vehicle carrying Singh's body reached from the airport. UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath was also with the hearse, as was BJP’s state chief Swatantra Dev Singh.
A few hours earlier, in Lucknow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP chief JP Nadda and Union home minister Amit Shah led the mourners in paying tribute to the Hindutva icon, who once spearheaded the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and quit as UP’s chief minister on December 6, 1992 -- the day the disputed structure in Ayodhya was brought down.
Hundreds of people from Aligarh’s Atrauli, where Singh was born and grew up, stormed the all decked-up stadium to see their leader one last time. Popular as ‘Babu ji’ among followers, Singh was a teacher in Atrauli before taking a plunge into politics. The region elected him as MLA for the first time in 1967. Singh’s popularity grew in leaps and bounds and he won ten of the 11 assembly polls he contested from Atrauli.
The two-time UP chief minister will be cremated in Bulandshahr’s Dibai area, about 35km from Atrauli, on Monday afternoon. Singh considered Dibai his ‘karambhoomi’. He was elected to Lok Sabha from Bulandshahr once and twice to the state assembly from Dibai constituency. Dibai is also the nearest Ganga ghat.
“Singh’s funeral procession will begin from the stadium at 9am on Monday. After a brief halt at Atrauli, it will reach Dibai where the last rites will take place at 3pm,” said Aligarh MP Satish Gautam.
“The death of Kalyan Singh is a huge and an irreplaceable loss for the party. I started my political career under his guidance and today I feel like an orphan,” he said.
“He always chose Atrauli over Dibai, but maintained that Aligarh is his ‘janambhoomi’ and Bulandshahr his ‘karambhoomi’. Therefore, he is being cremated in Dibai,” said Chandrapal Singh, a close aide of the BJP leader.
BJP’s top brass is likely to be present during the last rites, with workers claiming that over 5 lakh people are expected to attend the cremation.
Ram Singh, a former MLA from Dibai who represented the assembly seat in 1991 and 1993, couldn’t hold his tears. “He was like a brother. A leader, and a father-figure. He was the face of the Lodhi community. No one could say ‘no’ to Babuji,” Ram told TOI.
Abhishek Pandey, chief development officer (CDO) of Bulandshahr, said that the irrigation department’s land is being cleaned for the cremation of Kalyan Singh. The ground has a capacity to accommodate over 3,000 people but the nearby areas can accommodate a large crowd.
“The body of Kalyan Singh will be bathed in Ganga before cremation,” Pandey added.
