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Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's decision to merge 25 acres of land earmarked for a memorial to Indira Gandhi into her dream project --- the Rs 120 crore (approximately US$24.74 million) Ambedkar Park --- has angered Congressmen.
"We will not only take to the streets to mark our protest against this arbitrary decision, but will also take recourse to judicial redressal," Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Arun Kumar Singh 'Munna' told rediff.com
The move follows the Congress party's failure to mobilise support from other members of the opposition in the state assembly where the issue was raised.
The Bahujan Samaj Party-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government managed to get away by promising to allot another plot in the neighbourhood for a habitat centre to be named after Indira Gandhi.
BJP leader and Housing and Urban Development Minister Lalji Tandon pleaded that the government was "only shifting the site of the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan". He said the land allotted for the project had been lying unused for more than a decade. Besides, the habitat centre proposed to be build by the Housing and Urban Development Corporation in Lucknow would be named after the late prime minister.
Asked why funds had not been made available for the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan that was conceived by then chief minister Narain Dutt Tiwari in 1989, Tandon shot back, "We are not to blame for that; successive governments, including those under President's rule, did not allocate funds for the project."
He added that against the initial estimated cost of Rs 46 crore (approximately US$9.48 million), the cost of the project had gone up to Rs 80 crore (US$16.5 million). "The financial crunch we are currently going through does not permit us to provide that much money for it," Tandon said.
According to him, efforts were made to bring in private parties to share the cost of the project, but even that did not work. Meanwhile, some additional land was required for the Ambedkar project and with the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan land lying vacant, "it came in handy".
But Congressmen are not impressed by this argument. Former Uttar Pradesh governor Motilal Vora, who is now the party's treasurer, has taken serious note of the government's move.
Vora, who was in charge of Congress affairs in UP, said, "This is a clear-cut case of land-grabbing; after all, a sum of Rs 3.11 crore was paid to the Lucknow Development Authority towards the cost of the 25 acres of land in 1989."
He charged the Mayawati government with "setting a bad precedent by taking over this land". "Governments come and go, but institutions must not be disturbed," he said.
Meanwhile, UPCC president 'Munna' has issued directives to various district units of the party to prepare for statewide demonstrations against the decision. He told reporters in an informal chat on Wednesday that Mayawati was only going to give a bad name to Dr Ambedkar by resorting to "such cheap acts of usurping land".
"Babasaheb Ambedkar's prestige and stature in this country is not because of the Rs 120 crore memorial and park she is building in his name here," he said. "Babasaheb's contribution to the Congress, this nation, and above all the Indian Constitution is far taller than the concrete structure being erected in the controversial memorial."
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