No takers for the house next to UP CM’S
Who wouldn’t want to live next to the most famous address in Uttar Pradesh – 5, Kalidas Marg, the residence of the chief minister of India’s mostpopulous state?
The answer sadly is no one. Spooked by a superstition of ill luck descending on every occupant of the bungalow in the heart of Lucknow, there are no takers for the building.
The buzz in UP’S political and administrative circles is that anyone who occupies 6, Kalidas Marg – whether an IAS officer or a minister — either ends up in political or official ignominy, a decline in political fortunes, jail, or grave illness.
Preferring not to be named, an estate department officer said: “The house has been ‘branded’ inauspicious. There are no takers for it as of now.”
Because the bungalow has no takers, the estate department has begun thinking of repurposing it— either by demolition and merging it with the 7, Kalidas Marg — where deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya lives — or using the building as the security camp for chief minister Yogi Adityanath.
Politicians such as Amar Singh, Babu Singh Kushwahas, Waqar Ahmed Shah, Javed Abdi and officers such as Neera Yadav and Pradeep Shukla lived here before.
The last occupant of the bungalow was Javed Abdi, whom then chief minister Akhilesh Yadav gave a ministerial rank. But within months of moving in, Abdi was sacked from his position as chairman of the UP pollution control board.
Before Abdi, Waqar Ahmad Shah was allotted the residence as a senior minister when Akhilesh Yadav came to power. After moving in, Shah fell critically ill and went into coma. He never returned to work since then, and has been in hospital for five years.
Before that, close aide of then CM Mayawati, Babu Singh Kushwahar used to live there. But towards the end of Mayawati’s tenure, Kushwaha was sent to jail in connection with the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam.
Amar Singh, too, lived in the house as the chairman of the UP Film Development Corporation in Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government. He also had to face a brief period in jail in 2011 when he was sent to Tihar in the cash-forvotes scam. After that, Amar’s political career nosedived. But while bad times fell on Abdi, Waqar or Kushwaha while they lived here, Amar vacated the house in 2007, much before he went to jail.