Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh can never grow out of some of its old practices. Sample this: Every time a new government comes to power, it orders for a fresh coat of paint on the state transport buses. However, apart from the usual colours, the Adityanath government has introduced a new a shade this time: Saffron.

With this, the Uttar Pradesh State Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) can now boast of sporting the colours of all major political parties that have ruled the state in the last fifteen years.

So far, the fleet had some blue and white, representing Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), red and green for Samajwadi Party (SP). Now, BJP has added its favourite saffron on the state buses.

The Samajwadi Party didn’t waste time in targeting the BJP’s ‘agenda of saffronisation’ of the state, with this new move.

When in power, BSP launched the Sarvjan Hitay Sarvjan Sukhay bus service with dark blue and white as its theme colour. Then comes the Lohia Gramin Bus Seva launched by the Samajwadi Party had red and green stripes from the party flag. The service was launched with a promise of 20% lesser fare.

The new Antyoday buses with a saffron colour scheme

Now, the BJP government is all set to get a fleet of 50 new buses with a colour scheme of saffron and white, with saffron being UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s favourite. It is also associated with the idea of Hindutva.

In a bid to commemorate the centenary birth year of Deen Dayal Upadhayay, Uttar Pradesh State Roadways Transport Corporation will be launching the ‘Antyoday’ bus service with the new colour scheme. The new ‘bhagwa’ coloured buses will be launched on September 25, after the transport minister approves a model version.

The new buses are being prepared at the central workshop of UPSRTC in Kanpur. The cost of each bus has come to approximately Rs 24 lakhs. These fleet will comply with the Euro 4 emission norms and initially have a fleet of 50 buses for the Antyoday service.

Taking a potshot at the state government, Samajwadi Party MLC Sunil Singh Yadav ‘Sajan’ questioned the intention behind the ‘saffronisation’ of UPSRTC buses and said that BJP is desperate to implement its Hindutva agenda and are misusing the sacred ‘bhagwa’ colour for political gains.

“Bhartiya Janta Party wants to hide its incompetence behind the bhagwa colour; they are playing with the faith of crores of people. They just want to paint the state in bhagwa so that people cannot see their failures,” said Sajan.

When asked about the green and red colour scheme of Lohia Gramin Bus during the Samajwadi regime, Sajan said, “The colour scheme we adopted was to represent the Samajwadi colours, but BJP is trying to do something entirely different, if they really wanted to copy us they should have adopted orange and green going by their election symbol.”

The colour scheme of the Antyoday buses is still being finalized by the state transport minister. Chief General Manager (Operations) HS Gabba said that a final decision about the fare structure of these buses is yet to be made as they are aimed at providing better transport services at less cost.

The new service is being seen as a reply from the Adityanath government to the Lohia Gramin Bus Seva started by the Akhilesh Yadav government. While the fare of Lohia Gramin Bus Seva was 20% less than regular bus fares, it is also expected that the BJP government will also toe the lines.

‘Antyodaya’ means the ‘rise of the last person’ and it was one of the concepts emphasized by Deen Dayal Upadhyay, who was also one of the founding members of the RSS.