Lucknow: The Samajwadi Party will now match the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party statue for statue!
A 100 feet tall statue of Lord Ram in Ayodhya will be countered with a 50 feet tall statue of Lord Krishna in Sefai, the native village of Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav. Akhilesh will unveil the statue in Sefai before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Lord Krishna is looked upon as an ancestor of the Yadav community and is worshipped as the reigning deity by the community.
The installation of the statue is designed to consolidate the Yadav community vote in favour of the Samajwadi Party.
Yadavs, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and then the 2017 assembly elections, had drifted towards the BJP which led to major reverses for the Samajwadi Party.
The bronze statue of Lord Krishna depicts the Lord in a war mode, throwing a chariot wheel, supposedly at Bhishma. This is the only time during the war that Krishna had picked up a weapon. The statue weighs over 60 tonnes, including the bronze wheel which weighs nearly seven tonnes.
The choice of this theme by Mr Akhilesh Yadav, ahead of a big political war in 2019, is designed to send a message to his cadres that he is war ready.
The Yogi Adityanath government had announced that a 100 feet statue of Lord Ram would be installed on the banks of Saryu River.
