By IANS
Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s plans for expanding her second bungalow here into a sprawling estate were challenged in a court here Thursday.
NGO Jan Hit moved an application before the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court seeking contempt proceedings against Mayawati for violating the government’s own undertaking before the court.
The Uttar Pradesh government had in 2001 given an undertaking to the court that it would not allot any bungalow bigger than Type-V to any former chief minister.
Former chief ministers in Uttar Pradesh have been entitled to government accommodation since the mid-1970s.
Mayawati not only has a Type-VI bungalow in her name in Lucknow’s upscale Mall Avenue, but was out to allegedly grab four bungalows in the neighbourhood to expand her existing 33,000 square feet ex-chief minister’s bungalow into 250,000 sq feet of a virtually private estate.
This was besides the chief minister’s official residence on Kalidass Marg that was already renovated at her behest at a whopping Rs.45 million.
The issue was raised through a public suit moved by former state assembly secretary D.N. Mithal in 1996 that was eventually disposed of by the court in 2001 following the state government’s undertaking that also assured the court that all trusts and NGOs would be evicted from official bungalows.
Following Mithal’s demise, his son Anirudh Mithal, a retired general manager of Indian Railways, moved a contempt petition before the high court alleging violation of the undertaking by the state government.