Date:12/04/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/04/12/stories/2003041204611100.htm

Other States - Uttar Pradesh

U.P. Cong. fails to get land for project

By Our Special Correspondent

LUCKNOW APRIL 11. The Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee's campaign seeking the restoration of a prime piece of land in Lucknow's prestigious Gomti Nagar area to the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan (IGP) seems to have gone waste.

The land had been acquired by the State Government for extension of the Ambedker Memorial Project conceived by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mayawati.

A Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court has allowed the Mayawati Government to proceed with the construction of the Ambedkar Museum on the acquired land.

The court, however, directed the Government to allot 25 acres elsewhere for the IGP project while disposing of a number of public interest litigation petitions on Thursday.

The Congress had been insisting that the IGP site remain unchanged and the land acquired be restored to it. The party leaders refused to accept the Government's offer of an alternative site and said they could not be satisfied with anything less that the restoration of the original site.

Congress leaders in New Delhi and U.P. tried to make a political issue out of the Mayawati Government's decision to acquire the land in September last year and announced a State-wide agitation. Congress leaders had announced that as the name of the former Prime Minister was associated with the project, it had quite an emotional value for the party and they would not allow the State Government to get away with its apparently "improper decision" to acquire the land.

Ms. Mayawati had pointed to the Congress' "callousness" towards doing anything worth the while for the project when it was in power. She cited the decisions taken during the Governorship of Motilal Vora and Romesh Bhandari, both known Congress figures, favouring involvement of private bodies in the execution of the project, that never materialised.

Ms. Mayawati denied that she had anything against the project and said that she was ready to give an alternative site.

The foundation for the project had been laid by the then Congress Chief Minister, N.D. Tiwari, in 1989 but it failed to take off all these years.

That only showed the party's lack of interest in the project and the hue and cry being raised now was "meaningless", Ms. Mayawati said.