Noida, December 23: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday evening reached Noida, breaking the famous Noida ‘jinx’, which has scared away his several ministers from visiting the state’s urban hub as it is widely believed that whoever visits the city, loses power.
Yogi Adityanath is visiting the millennium city to review security and other arrangements ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the city on December 25 to inaugurate the Noida-Kalkaji Metro line.
Adityanath also attended meetings with district officials and will seek details of the progress of development works in the city. Around 1,300 police and paramilitary personnel have been deployed for Adithyanath’s security during his visit. Over 5,000 police officials and hundreds of paramilitary personnel would be deployed for PM Modi’s visit on Monday.
Although the city was developed from a cluster of small villages into the prime economic zone of the state, it has been avoided by past chief ministers.
Bahujan Samaj Party (BJP) supremo Mayawati was the only chief minister to have gone to Noida in 2011 to inaugurate a Rs 685-crore memorial park. After that, she lost in the state elections.
Even Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav who is considered as gen next politician gave in to the decade-old superstition. He didn’t even visit the city once, but still lost his seat in this year’s state assembly elections.
The superstition dates back to late 1980 when ND Tiwari and Veer Bahadur Singh were voted out of power within a month of their entering Noida.
Due to this, Mulayam Singh Yadav, then Chief Minister of UP, refused to visit the area in 2006 when it was reeling from the discovery of the bones and skulls of little children discovered in a drain in Nithari.
In 2002, BJP leader Rajnath Singh, who was then the Chief Minister of the state, inaugurated a flyover linking Delhi and Noida – but ensured that he stayed on Delhi’s side of the border.
Akhilesh had even skipped two mega-events in the town including the foundation stone of a Delhi-Meerut Expressway that was attended by PM Modi.