Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh has turned into a land of statues if the responses received to an RTI query are any indication.
In the past 22 years, from 1990-2012, the state government has erected 294 statues at an estimated cost of Rs 6.4 crores. These statues have been erected in parks, road crossings and in various institutions.
Though the Samajwadi Party may blame the BSP for introducing the “statue culture” in the state, the fact remains that the maximum number of statues have been erected in UP in the regimes of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The Mulayam Singh governments installed 75 statues, the Kalyan Singh governments came a close second with 72 statues, the Mayawati regime saw 55 statues coming up and 16 statues were installed in the Rajnath Singh regime in Uttar Pradesh.
According to Salim Beg, an RTI activist from Moradabad, on whose query, this information was given out, the maximum number of statues installed in the state during this period were those of Dr B.R. Ambedkar who had 25 statues installed in various parts of the state. The statues of Dr Ambedkar have been built in bronze, marble and fiberglass.
Apart from this, 10 statues of Choudhury Charan Singh were installed, six statues of Mahatma Gandhi, eight of Gautam Buddha, seven of Subhash Chandra Bose, six of Sardar Patel and two of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and two of Lal Bahadur Shastri.
BJP ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyay got two statues while Shyama Prasad Mukherjee had to remain content with two statues.
This highest number of Ambedkar statues clearly indicates the growing importance of dalit politics in Uttar Pradesh in the past two decades. Maharana Pratap, who is a Thakur icon, has three statues while Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj has 6 statues and Jyotiba Phule also has a similar number of statues.
Freedom fighters including Chandra Shekhar, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Ashfaqullah Khan, Roshan Singh, Uddham Singh and Rajendra Lahiri have one statue each.
One statue each of Sant Kabir, Tulsidas, Bhartendu Harishchandra, Munshi Premchand, Jai Shankar Prasad and Hazari Prasad Dwiwedi were also installed in various districts.
Signifying the emergence of OBC politics, the state got statues of Veerangana Avanti Bai Lodhi and Jhalkari Bai too.
According to an official in the state cultural department, several unfinished statues of party ideologues remain with the cultural department if the party gets voted out of power.
“We had statues of Mayawati and Kanshi Ram with us when the BSP lost the assembly elections. In July 2012, when the statue of Mayawati was vandalized in Lucknow, we could replace the same within hours because we had a spare one with us. With SP in power now, we have been asked to keep statues o Dr Ram Manohar Lohia and Mr Janeshwar Misra ready,” the official disclosed.
