Akhilesh Sniffs Smell Of Success In Kannauj

Akhilesh Yadav replaced his nephew Tej Pratap Yadav and decided to contest the Kannauj seat himself.

Kannauj's perfume park is an expanse of 50 acres with a boundary wall that awaits the laying of gas pipelines for the town's local manufacturers to begin setting up their perfume, or itra, making units at a project first conceived a decade ago by Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party government. The construction of roads in the complex and a substation was set up by the Yogi Adityanath regime.

Although the pace of work over the last 10 years could have been swifter, it has still been steady enough for Kannauj's perfume manufacturers, divided in their political allegiance between the Bharatiya Janata Party and SP, to dream of owning a plot inside the perfume park and indulge in good-natured sparring over whether they should credit Akhilesh Yadav or Yogi for its construction.

The arguments have become more heated in the run-up to the polling day in Kannauj (May 13), especially after Akhilesh Yadav reconsidered fielding his nephew Tej Pratap Yadav and announced his own candidature from the seat, which his wife Dimple lost by a mere 12,353 votes to the BJP's Subrat Pathak in 2019.

She was elected unopposed in a by-poll from the seat in 2012 and struggled to win against Pathak by 20,000 votes in 2014. However, 2019 was the first instance of the SP losing the seat, which Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh have represented, since 1998.

Pawan Trivedi, president of the Kannauj Attar and Perfumes Association, tells Business Standard that the project faced its fair share of challenges, including litigation, because of the SP government's poor decision-making. He credits the Adityanath government's intervention that expedited the process.

With around 60-70 plots identified within the park, of which two dozen have already been allotted, the future of the perfume park looks promising and is awaiting the laying of gas pipelines.

The park will have a museum, a hotel and a common facilities centre, including an itra bazaar.

According to Trivedi, there are 350 perfume manufacturing units in Kannauj, known as India's Grasse, the French town famous for its perfumeries, which a delegation led by Akhilesh Yadav visited when work on the park in Kannauj was started.

Apart from itra, or oil-based perfumes, Kannauj's manufacturers also make essential oils. Kannauj's perfume industry is included in the 'one district one product' (ODOP) scheme and has received a GI, or geographical indication, tag.

"Prime Minister Narendra Modi has popularised it by gifting itra from Kannauj to world leaders during the G20 summit," Trivedi, who also organised sending a "chariot load" of itra for the Ram temple in Ayodhya in January, says.

The size of the industry, some put it at Rs 1,200 crore (Rs 12 billion), is difficult to assess since several manufacturers have shifted to Mumbai, Delhi, and Lucknow and source the product from Kannauj while packaging it elsewhere.

Another manufacturer, who didn't want to be named, blamed the current BJP government for tardiness in completing the perfume park.

"Akhilesh Yadav had only three years from the time he conceived it to acquiring of land, but this government has had seven years," he said, adding that the orthodox thinking of the manufacturers, such as resistance to switching from wood-fired stoves to CNG-fired ones to heat the raw material has contributed to the delay.

At the SP office in Tirwa, a short distance from the perfume park, Samar Singh Yadav, a party worker, is marshalling workers to prepare for Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi's joint rally in Kannauj.

"What you see here in Kannauj, including the roads, the perfume park, cold storages, the medical college, and the hospital, were all done by our government," Samar said.

Another party worker, Anuj Yadav, is sure the youth will vote against the BJP because of the rising unemployment and "paper leaks". "Not just OBCs but Dalits will also vote for the SP because a full majority BJP government will change the Constitution," Anuj Yadav said.

In Unnao, where the SP's Annu Tandon is contesting against the BJP's Sakshi Maharaj, a two-term MP, the locals point to better law and order and the inauguration of the Ram temple as reasons to vote for the BJP one more time, a refrain heard in the nearby seats of Akbarpur and Kanpur.