Yogi’s unique gift to his teacher—a pucca road
KANPUR : In keeping with the ancient guru-shishya (teacher disciple) tradition, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has gifted a much-needed road to his former teacher who taught him in his school days.
The former teacher Nagendra Nath Bajpai, who taught the CM mathematics in class 9 and 10 in Tehri Garhwal, is now settled in Barra. He had met the chief minister in Lucknow on July 1 putting forth the demand of a road connecting villages Khujaupur and Salampur, Lalapur Karvi Gaon with Kanpur-Allahabad highway. And the chief minister was not the one to disappoint his former master. The work on the 1600 metre long road began within a week of Bajpai’s meeting with the CM. The government has released Rs 75 lakh of which Rs 15 lakh would be spent on 230 metre of RCC road, said SS Banerjee, junior engineer with Public Works Department (PWD).
An elated Bajpai couldn’t want more.
“I just put forth this long standing demand of the people of our area. It really warms my heart to see that he is still the same Ajay Mohan (his original name),” he said.Bajpai said the road was ‘kutcha’ and torturous to navigate during the monsoon and all efforts to draw the attention of public representatives drew a knot.A local Somendra Pratap Singh, who lives close to Bajpai’s house, said: “We knew Guruji (Bajpai) had taught Yogiji. We requested him to speak to the chief minister.”
On July 1, Bajpai met the CM at his residence in Lucknow and shared the ordeal of the people.
“The CM promised that the work will be done. Next day I was informed the PWD had come and surveyed the place. Three days later the money was released and now the work has started,” he said.Bajpai was posted in Rajkiya Inter College Gaja Tehri Garhwal in 1987. Yogi’s father Anand Singh Bisht, working with forest department, was also posted in the same town.
“Ajay Mohan was a dream student. I used to present him to the class as a student who can be emulated by others. He was highly disciplined and respectful to teachers,” he said adding “After becoming the CM when he came to a function at CS Azad University for Agriculture last year in September, then DM Surendra Singh took me to meet him.” “We had lunch together and I could see he hadn’t changed a bit. We spoke about his school days in Gaja. He even invited me to visit Lucknow,” he said.
Bajpai retired in 2014 from Rishikesh in Uttrakhand and is settled in Barra, Kanpur. He has a house in Khujaupur which he visits regularly to teach children mathematics.