Welcome fit for a PM

Manali didn’t feel like a vacation, while Mumbai flopped as a vocation. Will Lucknow finally feel like home?So hope city BJP workers as...

Manali didn’t feel like a vacation, while Mumbai flopped as a vocation. Will Lucknow finally feel like home?

So hope city BJP workers as Atal Behari Vajpayee comes to his constituency for the first time in six years not as a PM but as an ordinary MP. He is arriving for two days on July 3, and partymen are leaving no stone unturned to give him a rousing reception—no different from the ones that greeted him during his visits to Lucknow while in power.

On Saturday evening, a meeting was held at the Mall Avenue residence of MLA from Lucknow West and the party’s legislature party leader, Lalji Tandon, where it was decided that the cavalcade of the former PM should consist of at least 500 vehicles.

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Each of the 50 BJP corporators has been assigned the task of organising five vehicles, which will welcome Vajpayee at the airport and follow him wherever he goes in Lucknow. Over 200 welcome arches will be put up along the route he will take, apart from countless banners and hoardings.

‘‘We are elated, because after a gap of six years, we will be meeting our MP and not the PM. We will now get the chance to be with him for more time, which was not possible when he was the PM for security and other reasons,’’ said Hero Bajpai, the media in-charge of the BJP’s district unit.

However, again, no one is sure that’s what Vajpayee wants, or will once he is actually in Lucknow.

Everyone here recalls that almost all his speeches in the constituency, that has been returning him since 1991, would begin with: ‘‘Main Lucknow ka MP pehle hoon, PM baad mein (I am Lucknow MP first, later the PM).’’ Still, he has chosen to stay this time too at the high-security Raj Bhavan—like he used to do while he was PM—instead of the more-accessible VVIP Guest House or a government flat allotted to him in La Place colony.

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Said a disappointed RSS functionary: ‘‘Vajpayee’s visit this time is not going to be different from earlier ones because of his stay at Raj Bhavan. Entry at Raj Bhavan will be restricted, while before 1998, whenever he came to Lucknow, he would either stay at the VVIP Guest House or La Place, where workers had easy access.’’

In fact, Vajpayee hasn’t been to the flat, allotted to the Lucknow MP, since 1997.

‘‘Vajpayee’s nephew Raj Mishra used to stay there but he has also left,’’ says a neighbour. For the last three months, the flat has been lying locked. How far Vajpayee has travelled from his days in that house is apparent from the outside. The flat’s doors are covered with posters, carrying the former PM’s photo and an ardent appeal: Sabko parkha, Humko parkho (You have tested all, now test us).

People did, and Vajpayee clearly doesn’t like the result.