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

The Lucknow Municipal Corporation and Lucknow Development Authority are allegedly engaged in changing and re-changing colours, and two parks and forklift vehicles have been painted in saffron.

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

A combination photo shows the border pillars of cycle tracks first painted saffron and yellow and then re-painted to their original colours green-red-yellow. (Pankaj Jaiswal/HT Photo)

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.

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.