Mayawati government accused of misleading apex court on dalit leaders’ memorials

NEW DELHI - The Uttar Pradesh government was Wednesday accused of misleading the Supreme Court on the alleged violation of a Sep 8 order halting construction at various dalit leaders’ memorial sites in Lucknow.

The accusation was made by Lucknow resident Mithilesh Kumar Singh, whose lawsuit against the spate of dalit leaders’ memorials in the city has left the Mayawati government facing contempt proceedings before the apex court for allegedly violating its Sep 8 order.

In his rejoinder, filed in response to state Chief Secretary Atul Kumar Gupta’s reply to the apex court’s notice as to why the contempt to court proceedings should not be launched against it, Singh said that “the state government was trying to camouflage its violation of the court’s order in the garb of confusion over the order, though there was none.”

In his reply to the court’s notice Sep 17, while admitting the possibility of the government transgressing the Sep 8 order by way of continued construction at various memorial sites, Gupta had blamed it on “confusion” that arose out of the court’s order.

He had asserted that it was not clear on which sites the construction had been stayed and on which the construction was allowed to be continued.

Refuting Gupta’s assertion in his reply, Singh said that here was absolutely no confusion in the court’s order and if there was any confusion, it was the government’s duty to get this clarified rather than violating the court’s order.

“In the garb of so called confusion, though there was none, the state functionaries carried on the constructions at sites although they were restrained to do so by this court,” said Singh in his reply.

He also asserted that “to mislead this court and to create confusion, the state of Uttar Pradesh through its chief secretary, has split one composite site into different projects and coined new names for them in an attempt to show that the projects with newly coined names are not covered under any lawsuit and on that basis they continued constructions at those sites.”

“For example, Bhagidari Bhawan, Library and Police Chowki are all parts of Ambedkar Sthal at Gomti Nagar, Lucknow. Also known as Ambedkar Park, a complex within which all three sites are located, the construction activity was admittedly not stopped under the pretext that the above three sites were individually not under the ambit of any lawsuit, despite the same being within the Ambedkar Park, whose development as a memorial site was very much challenged,” said Singh.

The Supreme Court, too, on Sep 18 had expressed its dissatisfaction over the Uttar Pradesh government’s explanation of the alleged violation of the Sep 8 order.

“We are not satisfied with your affidavit,” a bench of judges B.N. Agrawal and Aftab Alam had remarked after perusing Gupta’s reply to the court’s notice.