PHULPUR: While Uttar Pradesh is credited with giving India eight of its 14 prime ministers since Independence, a single house in Phulpur — that of Congressman Shiv Shankar Dubey , aka Bhure Vaidya — can boast of having hosted four of these stalwarts.From first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his successors Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi to Janata Dal's Vishwanath Pratap Singh, all had frequented the house of Bhure Vaidya, as he was popularly called, whenever they came visiting to Phulpur, which incidentally was first represented in Lok Sabha by Nehru.The list of VIP visits doesn't end here. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, too had come to Phulpur and met Vaidya only a week a before he was assassinated at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu in 1991, says Nagesh Dubey, Vaidya's son who works as an accountant at IFFCO's Phulpur unit. Vaidya, who died in 2002, was a staunch Congressman and the son of freedom fighter Kailash Shankar Dubey. His house, naturally, became a hub of political activities. Till the end of his life, Vaidya never thought of switching loyalties, says Nagesh.The IFFCO unit in Phulpur was set up on Indira Gandhi's directive by V P Singh, when he was the agriculture minister in her cabinet in 1976-77. "Indiraji wanted Phulpur to be known nationally as her father had represented the constituency thrice before he died," says Nagesh, adding that Indira used to frequent his father's house with Pt Nehru during her childhood days.

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