The last rites of Anand Singh Bisht, father of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, were conducted in Rishikesh on Tuesday in the presence of close family members, Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and other ministers.
Yogi could not attend the funeral due to the nationwide lockdown and the last rites were conducted by the deceased’s youngest son Mahendra Bisht.
The mortal remains of 90-year-old Bisht reached his ancestral village in Pauri Garhwal on Monday evening in an ambulance from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Delhi, where he succumbed earlier in the day after undergoing treatment for the past three months.
The UP chief minister had made it clear yesterday that he would not attend the funeral of his father as he was duty-bound to stay in the state while a national lockdown to fight coronavirus was in place.
Anand Singh Bisht once worked with the Uttarakhand forest department as a range officer and used his knowledge of the area and the people very well as a social worker after retirement.
Rawat paid tributes to the departed soul at Phoolchatti in Pauri Garhwal district and consoled the bereaved family.
“The loss of social worker like Anand Singh ji will always be remembered by the state. The work done by him towards society will always be remembered. May God gives strength to the bereaved family to bear this loss,” said Rawat.
Ritu Khanduri, a legislator from Yamkeshwar block in Pauri Garhwal from where Bisht hailed, said that despite his old age, Bisht’s enthusiasm for helping people never saw any decline.
“I had known him for the past three years and he was like a father figure to me. From meetings to inaugurations of schools and colleges, helping children study better, I would always see him working for society,” said Khanduri.
Sharing an anecdote, she said, “Once there was a programme at a school in the block, and there was a one-kilometre steep walk downhill. By the time we were seeing off the chief minister, he had already climbed up the hill, like a young boy.”
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