‘Lok Bhawan’ conceived by Akhilesh Yadav (AY) to serve Yogi Adityanath (YA)

The loss in Uttar Pradesh election is only one disappointment that outgoing chief minister Akhilesh Yadav is nursing.

To see his successor and arch rival during the state electioneering, Yogi Adityanath, enter his plush office on the 5th floor of a new and imposing state secretariat building, which was originally conceived and expedited by him, is among the hardest letdowns in the context of losing the UP poll to BJP.

The new secretariat, which was modelled on UP legislature edifice, is situated opposite the historical UP assembly precincts.

One of his flagship projects, the new secretariat building ‘Lok Bhawan’ was conceived by outgoing CM Akhilesh Yadav to house the UP CM’s Office (CMO), besides offices of senior cabinet ministers and bureaucrats.

The building took about three years and incurred over Rs 600 crore to acquire semblance of completion in October 2016.

Although, a few government programmes were organised therein last year, the remaining civil works continued to be underway, while the CMO operated from the existing secretariat building ‘Shastri Bhawan’.

On October 3, then ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) president Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav had jointly inaugurated ‘Lok Bhawan’ with much fanfare in the hope the regime would trump anti-incumbency and retain power in the 2017 UP poll.

Lok Bhawan is equipped with state-of-art communication and security systems, besides auditorium, media arcade, underground parking, conference facilities etc to cater the needs of a modern and techno savvy state government.

After the inaugural ceremony, Akhilesh Yadav had held his first cabinet meeting in the new office with the hope that the ‘Samajwadis’ (socialists) would continue to occupy the seat of power in Lok Bhawan; a wish which never came true.

The existing five-storey secretariat building, also referred to as ‘Annexxe’ has been serving as the CMO for decades now. The CMO is situated on the fifth floor of Shastri Bhawan and affectionately termed as ‘Pancham Tal’ (5th floor) by the media and unofficially in the corridors of power to indicate seat of real power in UP.

Interestingly, the new secretariat also houses CMO on the 5th floor of B block. Lok Bhawan comprises three blocks A, B and C, spanning an area of 6.3 acres. It consists of a 600 seat auditorium and is equipped with infrastructure to house over 1,300 officials and employees at any given time.

Since, certain civil works are still on, the new building would be fully completed in another few months.