Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 8 (IANS) The Supreme Court Tuesday brought the Mayawati government’s memorial building spree to a halt by extracting an assurance from it against further construction at 45 sites in Lucknow that are being developed into memorials to Dalit leaders, including herself.
A bench of Justice B.N. Agrawal and Justice Aftab Alam extracted the assurance from the state government, chiding it for resorting to what the bench said were half truths and lies like “Ashwatthama Hatto Hatth” - a line from Hindu epic Mahabharata. The eldest of the Pandavas Yudhisthir had quibbled with words to announce to Guru Dronacharya the death of Ashwatthama, an elephant who shared the name with the Guru’s son during the war.

“This is like saying ‘Ashwatthama Hatto Hatth’,” snapped the bench at Uttar Pradesh counsel and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) general secretary Satish Chandra Mishra for not telling an apex court bench on Feb 27 this year that the government had already demolished various properties and buildings in Lucknow at the time the court passed an order asking them not to be razed.

The bench was hearing a lawsuit by Lucknow resident Mithilesh Kumar Singh, challenging the state government’s memorial building spree in Lucknow at an estimated cost of Rs.20 billion, which the bench repeatedly termed as “a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money”.

Appearing for Singh, senior counsel Abhisek Manu Singhvi, pointed out to the court that as the Uttar Pradesh government faced severe opposition to its construction spree in the state in the form of a slew of lawsuits it had moved the apex court to get the lawsuits transferred here.

In spite of the pending lawsuits, the state government has continued building the memorials.

This prompted the court to observe, “You (the Uttar Pradesh government) are trying to present a fait accompli before this court.”

The bench was specially peeved at Mishra after noticing from his argument that before Feb 27, 2009, when the court had ordered stop to further demolitions, the state government had already completed its razing of buildings.

“Why was it not brought to the notice of this court that all the buildings and properties, figuring in the writ petition, have already been demolished? Why was the court not told that it was passing a futile order (on Feb 27, 2009)?” asked the bench.

As Mishra sought to wriggle out of the situation and made some conflicting statement, the bench rapped him, saying, “This is very serious. Don’t take it very lightly.”

The court rebuked the BSP official for also making statements on facts of the case “out of his personal knowledge”, which were at variance with facts.

“Don’t make statements which are out of your personal knowledge. It’s not permitted here,” said the bench.

Despite the court disapproving his arguments “reeking of political overtones”, Mishra went on to assert that the petitioner was challenging the Uttar Pradesh government’s construction drive only because he belonged to the Congress party, a rival of the BSP.

He went on to also assert that “the Congress had built at least 450 similar memorials and institutions, named after various leaders of a single family, wasting taxpayers’ money worth several billions.”

But his argument failed to cut ice with the court, which was keen on passing its own order to stop further construction.

The bench, however, refrained from passing its own order as Mishra contended that he had not been fully heard.

After taking an assurance from him that the government would undertake no further construction, the bench deferred the mater to Sep 29 for further hearing.