Dimple Yadav's constituency to get modern perfume plant

If all goes well, a modern perfume manufacturing plant would soon be set up in Kannauj, the parliamentary constituency of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple Yadav, officials said on Monday.

Kannauj is widely known for traditional 'itra'. Perfumes are extracted from flowers, leaves and even 'mitti' - earth - in Kannauj.

With the perfume industry there in a slump for the past few years, local traders have been demanding a revival package from the state government as also an initiative for marketing the local perfumes.

Chief Minister Yadav and his wife have just returned from a ten-day visit to France, where the duo visited many perfume-producing regions and got to know the modern ways to make and market perfumes across the world. They also visited Netherlands.

A high-level delegation that accompanied the chief minister is understood to have interacted with perfume majors in Paris and tried to impress them with low-cost but high-quality perfumes produced in Kannauj.

Arun Mehrotra, a local perfume manufacturer, told IANS that the development was a "welcome one, provided it is taken to a logical conclusion".

"It's indeed a good news. However, it is yet to be seen how things roll out. Like in the past, such pronouncements should not remain merely on files and in news headlines," he remarked.

Officials at the Chief Minister's Office said that more than Akhilesh, Kannauj MP Dimple Yadav was following up on the "action taken on the issue during the French visit".