New Delhi: Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav was cremated with full state honours at his ancestral village in Saifai, Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday evening.
Singh died at a Gurugram hospital in Haryana on Monday morning after a prolonged illness. He was 82.
The Uttar Pradesh government has declared a three-day mourning in tribute to the stalwart politician who has been the state’s chief minister for three times. He has been Lok Sabha MP for seven terms and the country’s defence minister once.
A host of political leaders, including Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, attended the funeral in the evening. A sea of people could be heard chanting “netaji amar rahein” as Yadav’s mortal remains were carried in a vehicle for his last rites.
Condoling his death, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the leader “a key soldier for democracy during the Emergency”.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi said the voice of socialist ideas had fallen silent with Yadav’s death. “His struggle for the oppressed and downtrodden will always be remembered,” she added.
Former prime minister Manmohan Singh called Yadav an icon of the socialist movement “who devoted his whole life to the service of the poor and other backward communities”.
At the funeral, the Congress was represented by party presidential candidate Mallikarjun Kharge, MP Pramod Tiwari and other leaders.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla called the departed politician a “leader of the people”. “Throughout his life, he advocated for the poor and farmers,” Birla said at the funeral.
Others present at the funeral were Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, PSP chief Shivpal Yadav, Samajwadi Party MP Jaya Bachchan and her son Abhishek.
Yadav’s son and present Samajwadi party chief Akhilesh Yadav lit the leader’s pyre.
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