Modi to lay foundation of univ in Aligarh named after Jat king
LUCKNOW : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Aligarh in western Uttar Pradesh on September 14 to lay the foundation stone of a state university named after Jat king Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh, after whom the RSS-BJP had in the past wanted renaming of the Aligarh Muslim University.
This will be the first of the many visits of Modi ahead of the 2022 assembly election in UP, BJP leaders said adding that a detailed itinerary of the PM was being worked out.
Last year, Modi had virtually attended the centenary celebrations of AMU but ahead of 2022
UP polls, much political symbolism is being attached to his visit to lay the foundation stone of a state university in Aligarh after Singh, the erstwhile king of Mursan (in Hathras district), who belonged to a community currently at the forefront of the farmers’ stir across the state against the Centre’s three farm laws.
Interestingly, Mahendra Pratap Singh, a leftist in his political ideology, had defeated BJP stalwart and former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Mathura in 1957 when Vajpayee had contested on a Jan Sangh ticket while Singh as an independent.
The farmers’ stir (majority of protesting farmers in UP are Jats), backed by the opposition parties, has been gaining momentum ahead of the UP polls and the BJP’s Uttar Pradesh unit has been targeting the stir through a series of cartoons depicting Yogi Adityanath as a no-nonsense chief minister.
“It’s clear that closer to elections, BJP would want to re-emphasise the point about the
neglect of freedom fighters or patriots like Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh. Since he happened to be a Jat too, the political symbolism of the move to get the PM to lay the foundation stone of another university in Aligarh is obvious. However, none should object as Singh was a true freedom fighter who deserves all credit,” said Irshad Ilmi, a political commentator.
AMU officials admit that the Jat king had in 1929 given 3.04 acres of land to the university on a 90-year lease that expired in 2019, the year when the Yogi government announced to set up a state university after the late king.
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath, whose office confirmed the PM’s visit, had said in a public meeting that the Jat king had posed a big challenge to the British and later was believed to have set up a provisional government in Afghanistan.
“The Raja was dead against Muhammad Ali Jinnah and had in a letter to Mahatma Gandhi described him as a snake,” claimed Aligarh BJP chief Rishi Pal Singh. “We are proud that a university has been named after a patriot who was against Jinnah and all lovers of his ideology. It would have been befitting had AMU honoured the great leader who had been the president of the provisional government at Kabul in 1915 and who donated land for AMU,” the BJP leader said. Back in 2018, the party’s Aligarh MP Satish Gautam had written to the AMU vice chancellor objecting to a portrait of Pakistan’s founder in the university.
The Rashtriya Lok Dal, an ally of the state’s main opposition Samajwadi Party, has welcomed the decision to set up a university after the Jat king.
RLD spokesman Rohit Agarwal said party chief Jayant Chaudhary has welcomed the decision. “Raja Mahendra gave land to AMU and was a great freedom fighter. We welcome the decision to honour his legacy and in fact demand a Bharat Ratna for him,” the RLD spokesman said.