Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Wednesday handed over the keys of a government bungalow allotted to her in Lucknow’s Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg to the state authorities, PTI reported.
The BSP chief claimed that she sent the keys through post after estates officer Yogesh Kumar Shukla refused to receive them, The Indian Express reported. Shukla said the BSP chief has been asked to vacate the bungalow on Mall Avenue, where she is staying, and not the one on Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg.
Mayawati has claimed that the Mall Avenue bungalow is a memorial to Kanshi Ram, her party’s ideologue. A BSP delegation met Chief Minister Adityanath last week and submitted a set of government orders from 2011 – when Mayawati was the chief minister – showing that the bungalow was converted into a memorial. As per the documents, Mayawati is the memorial’s caretaker.
Mayawati then urged the chief minister to direct the authorities to issue a fresh notice asking her to vacate the bungalow on Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg, the Hindustan Times reported. “The principal secretary Estate Department and principal secretary, chief minister had been also informed that BSP chief had vacated the bungalow,” her personal secretary said. “The security and maintenance of the bungalow now rests with the Estate Department.”
The Supreme Court on May 7 struck down Section 4(3) of the UP Ministers (Salaries, Allowances and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2016, that allowed former chief ministers to stay in government bungalows. The top court had said that such a legislation was “arbitrary, discriminatory and unsupported by the Indian Constitution”.
On May 17, the Uttar Pradesh government issued notices to six former Uttar Pradesh chief ministers, including from the BJP, to vacate their official bungalows in Lucknow within 15 days. They are Narayan Dutt Tiwari, Kalyan Singh, Mayawati, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav and Rajnath Singh.
Following the notice, Mayawati had put up a nameplate outside the 13 Mall Avenue residence declaring that the building was the Sri Kanshiram ji Yadgar Vishram Sthal (Sri Kanshi Ramji Memorial Rest House).
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