‘DeMo boy’ to get 2 houses, courtesy Akhilesh
KANPUR : Born in a bank queue during demonetisation, Khazanchi will be brought up in a house of his own.
As he turns two, on December 2, Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav will gift two prefabricated houses to the infant, who went on to become the ‘brand ambassador’ against demonetisation amid protests and politics on the note-ban move two years back.
The houses will be fixed on a 25 feet by 25 feet platform in Ankitpur and Sardarpur villages, where his mother and grand maternal parents live in abject poverty.
Each prefabricated house will have two rooms, a bathroom, kitchen, courtyard and a lobby. The company assembling these houses has already sent a three-member team, headed by engineer DD Sharma, to finalise the place and collect the measurement for the platform.
The platforms will be completed in less than a week and the assembled structures were expected to arrive by November 20.
“I am elated. We will now have our own house. My kid is proving to be a Khazanchi (cashier) in a real sense,” said Sarvesha Devi, 32, on phone from her village Ankitpur.
Back in 2016, she had to stand for five hours in a bank queue of nearly 500 people in Kanpur Dehat on December 2 when she went into labour.
Her mother Shashi Devi took her to a corner, where she delivered a boy.
All praise for Akhilesh, Sarvesha said, “Only a brother like him can do what he has done; I pray to God that every woman gets a brother like him.”
While memories of standing in the queue for hours are still fresh, there had been no end to Sarvesha’s ordeal as she lost her husband about six months after Khazanchi’s birth.
“The family at present lives a broken hut. Our leader believes the children need safe and clean environment to grow,” said Suresh Yadav, former block pramukh, who visited the two villages with a team of engineers on Wednesday evening.
One of his elder siblings has been diagnosed with tuberculosis and three others are malnourished. In September this year, Akhilesh had sent some cash to the family for treatment.
As state’s chief minister, Akhilesh had called on Sarvesha Devi along with 12 other families who lost their members during the demonetisation period.
In his rallies, the SP chief hasn’t stopped mentioning Khazanchi’s name and the circumstance he was born in.
In the run up to 2017 assembly polls, Khazanchi became synonymous with the difficulties people faced because of demonetisation.
As major opposition parties keep demonetization in focus in the run up to 2019 Lok Sabah elections, Khazanchi has become a talking point again.
SP MLC Kalloo Yadav claimed no one in the village has got a concrete house in either of two villages. “These two would be first concrete structures and government should provide a list of those who were being given the pucca houses in UP.”