CJI setback for Mayawati; asked to return money spent on statutes
Prior to the Lok Sabha elections, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati has suffered a major setback from the Supreme Court. Commenting on the hearing of a petition on Friday, the Supreme Court said that BSP supremo Mayawati should refund the amount of public money she has spent in making self and elephant statues. Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi was hearing the case. The next hearing of this case will be on April 2.
While hearing the petition filed by Ravikant and others filed by the Supreme Court in 2009, it was said that all the money spent on idols should be deposited in the official treasury. During the hearing, Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi asked Mayawati’s counsel to tell her client to deposit the money spent on those idols in the official treasury.
Many parks were constructed during Mayawati’s BSP regime in Uttar Pradesh. In these parks, BSP founders Kanshi Ram, Mayawati and elephants were sculpted. This issue arises in the elections and the opposition targets this issue. In the BSP regime, these parks were built in other cities including Lucknow, Noida.
Before the Supreme Court had asked for information about government money spent on Park and Statues from the Uttar Pradesh government in 2015. In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party government of has surrounded BSP on this issue.
The expenditure was about 6000 crore
During the Akhilesh government in Uttar Pradesh, the report of Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) came out which claimed that a total of Rs 5,919 crore had been spent on parks built in Lucknow, Noida and Greater Noida.
According to the report, 30 sculptures of stone of the BSP election symbol elephant at the site of the Dalit inspiration in Noida and 22 images of the bronze were installed. It cost 685 crores. It has also been said in this report that 5,634 employees were employed for the maintenance of these parks and statues.
It is worth mentioning that during the 2012 assembly elections, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav had raised this issue with a loud noise. Then Akhilesh had accused Mayawati of scam of Rs 40 thousand crore.
