Last rites of Kalyan Singh to be performed at Bulandshahr with full state honours

Aligarh: The last rites of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh will be performed on Monday at Rajghat in Narora of Bulandshahr district with full state honours, officials here said. The mortal remains of the BJP leader, which were kept at Ahilya Bai Holkar stadium here, will be taken to his native village Madholi and from there they will be taken to Rajghat, they said. Singh died at the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI) in Lucknow on Saturday night. He was 89. On Sunday night, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, while paying homage, described Singh as “a true son of Bharat Mata”. He said that the veteran BJP leader would be considered among those leaders of his generation who had deeply impacted Indian politics of his era. Paying homage to Singh at the stadium, where thousands queued up to pay their last respects, Adityanath said “such was Singh’s love for Lord Ram that he did not care about the lure of office when he had to choose between the two”. The former Rajasthan governor’s mortal remains arrived by air ambulance at the Dhani Pur air strip on Sunday evening and Adityanath, state BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh and Etah MP Rajveer Singh, who is son of Singh, were also present there. On Sunday Prime Minister Narendra Modi, defence minister Rajnath Singh, BJP chief JP Nadda and other leaders paid tributes to Singh in Lucknow. Singh, who also served as the Rajasthan governor, was admitted to the intensive care unit of the SGPGI in a critical condition on 4 July. He died due to sepsis and multi-organ failure, the hospital said. Singh was the Uttar Pradesh chief minister when the Babri mosque was demolished by a mob of “karsevaks” in Ayodhya on 6 December, 1992. Along with BJP veterans L K Advani and M M Joshi, he was among the 32 people acquitted in the demolition case in September last year. A Lodhi leader, he was instrumental in the rise of the BJP to power in Uttar Pradesh in the 1990s. He is survived by his wife Ramvati Devi, son Rajveer Singh, who is the Lok Sabha MP from Etah, and grandson Sandeep Singh, who is the minister of state for finance, technical education and medical education in Uttar Pradesh.