Lucknow, Aug. 16: Laloo Prasad Yadav’s admirers wrote Laloo Chalisa, a compilation of verse in praise of the Bihar strongman. Lalji Tandon inspired a thick biography extolling the Uttar Pradesh BJP leader’s political beliefs. But Mulayam Singh Yadav does not seem interested in piffling paeans.

So his fans are bringing out something more substantial — like an 11-volume encyclopaedia.

A leading publisher and some senior officers of the Uttar Pradesh public relations department have busied themselves with the encyclopaedia that covers the chief minister’s 37-year public career and reflects his “unique political position”.

The first volume, now complete, has been named Mulayam Singh Yadav — Vichar aur Chintan (Mulayam Singh Yadav — Ideas and Philosophy).

The encyclopaedia would give readers an account of the Samajwadi Party chief’s early years, his birth in a poor farmer family in Etawah district on November 22, 1939, his education — the chief minister passed his MA and BT from the University of Agra — and his marriage in 1957.

It would say how Mulayam Singh, always sensitive to social disparities and problems faced by scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes, was inspired by the thoughts of socialist thinker Ram Manohar Lohia and even went to jail at the age of 15 for taking part in a movement. He later came in touch with leaders and thinkers like Sri Madhu Limaye, Karpoori Thakur and Ramsevak Yadav.

Mulayam Singh made it to the Vidhan Sabha for the first time from Jaswantnagar constituency in Etawah in 1967 on a Samyukta Socialist Party ticket. He was the youngest member in the Vidhan Sabha.

In 1977, he became cooperative and animal husbandry minister in the Janata Party government.

This stint as minister, the encyclopaedia would narrate, catapulted him to a position of champion of the backwards because he implemented reservations at all levels in cooperative societies for the first time.

“The work, exhaustive in its details, would be the first of its kind in the country,” a senior officer in the Uttar Pradesh information department said.