Akhilesh Yadav banks on 'Noida jinx' to oust Yogi-Modi

Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav seems to be banking on a superstition to oust his successor Yogi Adityanath.

Akhilesh feels that the 'Noida jinx' (a belief among many serving UP chief ministers that whosoever visits Noida loses the post...Adityanath broke the jinx) will cost Adityanath his job and pave the way for his return to power in the state.

Adityanath had visited Noida to join Prime Minister Narendra Modi in flagging off the new Metro on December 25. Akhilesh was not invited at the program.

''It is good that I was not invited.....the effect of the Noida visit will be visible...you (media) can understand that,'' he remarked apparently referring to the jinx.

The SP supremo said that the effect of 'Noida jinx' would also be felt by Modi.

Many of Yogi's predecessors, including Akhilesh, Rajnath Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Kalyan Singh, chose not to visit Noida while being the chief minister of the state following a superstitious belief that they might lose their post if they did.

These chief ministers chose to inaugurate the projects in Noida through remote buttons from the state capital. It was another matter that none of these chief ministers returned to power even though they stayed away from Noida.

BSP supremo had tried to break the jinx and visited Noida while she was the chief minister of the state but she was defeated in the 2012 assembly elections.

According to the sources the superstition attached with Noida visit started around 30 years back when the then chief minister Veer Bahadur Singh lost his job immediately after visiting Noida.

In the subsequent years N.D.Tewari and Kalyan Singh also lost their jobs in 1989 and 1999 after visiting Noida. Adityanath, however, broke the jinx and he also came in for praise from Modi.

Akhilesh also hit out at Adityanath for showcasing what he termed the ''fake'' Gujarat model and said that the BJP government had failed to provide relief to the farmers, who were forced to throw their produce on the roads.