Uttar Pradesh painted and re-painted in political game of colours

A political game of colours seems to be going on in Uttar Pradesh, particularly the state capital.

Even as the issue of UP Haj Committee office’s boundary wall being painted saffron and then getting restored to its original colour was yet to die down, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) and Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) are allegedly engaged in changing and re-changing colours.

The LMC, since Tuesday, painted in saffron two of its parks in Gomti Nagar’s Viram Khand and its two heavy forklift vehicles (that lift wrongly parked vehicle away).

The LDA on Thursday began painting, in saffron and yellow, the border pillars of cycle tracks, constructed by the previous Akhilesh Yadav government.

By Saturday evening the LDA managed to cover about 1 km of the tracks. However, in a U-turn on Sunday, these cycle track pillars were being repainted in their original green-red-yellow colours.

While the pillars are going through colour correction, allegedly because of a political backlash from the Samajwadi Party, the parks and the LMC forklift vehicles may continue with their changed colours. The original colour of the forklift vehicles was ‘navy blue’ or their factory custom colour of yellow.

Forklift vehicles that were coloured saffron. (Pankaj Jaiswal/HT Photo)

However, municipal commissioner Udairaj Singh said: “No directives for painting any park, in any specific colour, have been issued by any official of the LMC. Usually the colour of boundaries of parks is decided by residents and corporators. LMC never interferes in the colour choices, In the case of Gomti Nagar no directives were given. He also said that any colour should not be associated with any political party.” Singh added that he did not give any instruction for saffron painting of LMC forklift vehicles .

Chakresh Jain, the LDA Gomti Nagar zone in-charge where the cycle tracks were painted was not available for comments.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s love for saffron colour is well-known and the saffron push began in October .

First Shastri Bhawan, the UP secretariat’s annexe building, was painted in two shades of saffron. Then all the buses of the new Antodaya bus service of UP State Road Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) had saffron as its signature colour. This was followed by the Haj Committee office and then the Kotwali police station -- one of the biggest police stations in Lucknow.

In December 2017, heads of different villages in Pilibhit, in an apparent bid to please their political seniors, painted 80 of the 1,230 government primary schools saffron. Later, they were ordered to restore the schools’ original white colour by district magistrate Sheetal Verma.