TIL Desk/National/UP/ A sea of people descended on Tuesday for the last rites of veteran socialist leader Mulayam Singh Yadav at his native Saifai village in Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh, the cloudy sky and intermittent morning drizzle adding to the sombreness.
The Samajwadi Party founder and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister passed away aged 82 at a private hospital in Gurugram on Monday. His mortal remains were brought to Saifai Monday evening and kept at his ‘kothi’ where people poured in to pay their last respects to netaji, as Yadav was fondly called.
With hundreds queued up for the final darshan amid the drizzle, Yadav’s body was moved around 10 am Tuesday from the house to a bigger hall on the Mela Ground premises, around one km away, to allow people to pay their last respects.
The former chief minister’s son Akhilesh Yadav, brother Shivpal Yadav and other family members were onboard the truck decked up with garlands of flowers. A huge crowd of people marched along as the vehicle moved slowly on the concrete road of the village. Party workers and people in their hundreds — riding cycles, motorcycles, cars, SUVs and other means of transport — arrived at Saifai from areas nearby and places far off Tuesday morning for the final rites.
