The session began with a two-minute silence in memory of those who lost lives in the tsunami disaster.

Then, in his address, Mulayam Singh Yadav announced that he was setting up a college in a village in Uttar Pradesh that would be on a par with the premier Indian Institute of Technology.

He created a buzz among the audience by announcing that the college would be named after Amitabh Bachchan. Even the Bollywood icon seemed taken by surprise by the announcement.

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