Despite much hype, Akhilesh Yadav fails to turn up for Pravasi Bharatiya Divas

LUCKNOW: Despite the hype over his visit to the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Gandhinagar,CM Akhilesh Yadav failed to turn up at the event on Friday. The CM’s office claimed that his airplane could not take off due to bad weather.

The CM was given an exclusive slot to address NRIs and investors. In his absence, Ministers of state Abhishek Mishra and Yasir Shah, Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan, Industrial Development Commissioner Sanjeev Saran and UP Expressway Development Authority CEO Navneet Sehgal represented the state at the event.

This is not the first time that Akhilesh has skipped an important event. In November 2013, he did not turn up at the “e-Uttar Pradesh IT Conclave” in the state capital despite confirmation. Senior officials of HP, Intel, Microsoft and KPMG had come to attend the two-day conference but left after the young CM failed to keep his date.

The CM official twitter handle showed him at the Saifai airstrip waiting for the weather to clear for his plane to take off. His visit had also turned significant in the wake of the Ahmedabad municipal corporation removing several of his hoardings a few days ago, attracting much ire of the UP government which termed the move as illegal and “willful harassment”.