Bahujan Samak Party chief Mayawati on Saturday vacated her second government bungalow in Lucknow as per a Supreme Court order and will be moving to a private bungalow right opposite the official house, NDTV reported. This comes days after she claimed that the bungalow on Mall Avenue was a memorial to Kanshi Ram, her party’s ideologue, and she didn’t have to vacate it as she was the caretaker of the house.
“Kanshi Ram used to stay here in Lucknow when he used to travel here,” Mayawati said on Saturday, according to NDTV. “And this was converted to a memorial in his memory. Today, I am also vacating the portion at the Kanshi Ram memorial where I used to stay. But this should continue to be a memorial, and the responsibility is of the Uttar Pradesh government.”
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. 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.
Earlier on Saturday, former Uttar Pradesh chief ministers, Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son Akhilesh Yadav, also vacated their government bungalows and shifted to the VVIP guest house. While Union minister Rajnath Singh has shifted to his residence in Gomti Nagar area, Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh’s belongings have been moved to the official bungalow of his grandson, Sandeep Singh – an Uttar Pradesh Cabinet minister.
Narayan Dutt Tiwari is yet to vacate his house as his wife had sought more time from the estate department saying that her husband was in the “last stages” of his life. A board reading “Pandit Narain Dutt Tiwari Sarvjan Vikas Foundation” has been put up outside his residence in an apparent bid to save the bungalow, PTI reported.
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