Losing power in Uttar Pradesh is only one of the very many disappointments that outgoing chief minister Akhilesh Yadav is probably having to contend with.
Visualising his successor occupying his plush office ensconced in a spanking and imposing new state secretariat building, one which was conceived and later expedited towards completion, would surely count among the top letdowns in the aftermath of losing the 2017 UP poll to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The new secretariat building, which draws inspiration from the UP legislature edifice, is situated diametrically opposite the historical UP assembly precincts. Though some civil work is still underway, the building is nonetheless gearing up to host the new CM following the change of guard in India’s largest state.
One of his flagship projects, the new secretariat building ‘Lok Bhawan’ was conceived by outgoing CM Akhilesh Yadav to house the UP Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), besides offices of senior cabinet ministers and bureaucrats.
The building took about three years and incurred over Rs 600 crore to acquire some semblance of completion in October 2016.
Although, a few government programmes were organised in the new building last year, the remaining civil work continued to be underway, while the CMO operated from the existing secretariat building ‘Shastri Bhawan’, which is also a stone’s throw and stands behind the state legislature edifice.
On October 3, then ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) president Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav had jointly inaugurated ‘Lok Bhawan’ with much fanfare in the hope the regime would trump anti-incumbency and retain power in the 2017 UP poll.
Lok Bhawan is equipped with state-of-art communication and security systems, besides auditorium, media arcade, underground parking, conference facilities etc to cater the needs of a modern and techno savvy state government.
After the inaugural ceremony, Akhilesh Yadav had even held his first cabinet meeting in the new office and expressed hope the ‘Samajwadis’ (socialists) would continue to occupy the seat of power in Lok Bhawan; a wish which never came true.
The existing five-storey secretariat building, also referred to as ‘annexxe’ has been serving as the CMO for decades now. The CMO is situated on the fifth floor of Shastri Bhawan and affectionately termed as ‘Pancham Tal’ (5th floor) by the media and unofficially in the corridors of power to indicate seat of real power in UP.
Interestingly, the new secretariat also houses CMO on the 5th floor of B block. Lok Bhawan comprises three blocks A, B and C, spanning an area of 6.3 acres.
It consists of a 600 seat auditorium and is equipped with infrastructure to house over 1,300 officials and employees at any given time.
Since some civil work is still on, the new building would be fully completed in another few months, a senior government official said on anonymity.