The Wire: New Delhi: Saturday, July
16, 2016.
RTI activist
Subhash Chandra Agrawal has found that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
government waived a Rs 1.98 crore rent bill of former Lok Sabha speaker Meira
Kumar for the 6 Krishna Menon Marg bungalow she occupied.
The bungalow
was allotted to Kumar’s father and former union minister Babu Jagjiwan Ram and
then passed on to his widow Indrani Devi. After her mother’s death, Kumar
converted the bungalow into an unofficial memorial to her father and retained
it, despite requesting neither the Directorate of Estates nor the Lok Sabha
secretariat for a rent waiver.
Agrawal filed
applications with both departments to learn if they been approached for rent
waivers.
On July 11,
in response to his second appeal, the Lok Sabha secretariat informed Agrawal
that, on June 1, the Central Information Commission ordered it to provide
copies of any letters received, and it forwarded a copy of this order to the
office of the speaker and the Members Service Branch at the ministry of urban
development for appropriate action.
The
secretariat said that on June 17, the officer of the speaker stated that “even
after exhaustive search and scrutiny of all available records no such letter
was found.” Similarly, it said that on July 4, the Members Services Branch
stated that “no records are available to suggest that any letter/communication
for waiver of rent has been sent by this Secretariat to Directorate of
Estates.”
The Member
Service Branch said it had asked the Directorate of Estates to clarify whether
it had received any letters regarding rent waivers from the Lok Sabha
secretariat. On June 28, the directorate responded that “as per records
available in Type Special section, [it had] not received any letter from Lok
Sabha Secretariat or any official of Lok Sabha Secretariat seeking the waiving
off of any dues pertaining to the bungalow.”
In a note
sent to the media, Agrawal said that, all concerned departments having
responded to the query, it had been “confirmed” that the Rs 1.98 crore rent
bill was “cancelled” by the UPA regime without any request on record. “UPA
regime had thus shown undue favours to Meira Kumar in respect of the prime
property once occupied by her father late Babu Jagjiwan Ram in his capacity as
Union Minister,” he further asserted.
Agrawal also
demanded that “the Central government should re-generate the rent-bill for
recovery because the bungalow was kept forcibly and illegally occupied as an
unofficial memorial.”
Agrawal
additionally contended that the UPA regime “allotted this bungalow in the name
of Babu Jagjiwan Ram Foundation for indirectly authenticating the bungalow as
memorial of Babu Jagjiwan Ram to counter the year 2000-note of Union Cabinet
which prohibited any further conversion of any government-bungalow in Lutyens’
Zone of New Delhi into a memorial”.
Agrawal said
it was well-known that this bungalow was openly turned into an unofficial
memorial and that successive central governments deliberately kept it
“un-allotted” to “allow such illegal activity of encroachment and trespass’’.
Pointing out
that the current government thwarted a similar attempt by Jat leader Ajit Singh
to convert the 12 Tughlaq Road bungalow into a memorial to his father, former
prime minister Charan Singh, Agrawal has demanded that the 25-year lease of the
6 Krishna Menon Marg bungalow be cancelled and allotted to someone genuinely
entitled to its possession.
While the
demand may be legally tenable, it may not politically suit the Narendra Modi
government, since Jagjiwan Ram was a known Dalit leader and both the Bharatiya
Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are presently trying to woo
the community.
With certain
large states where the community holds significant sway headed for assembly
elections, including Uttar Pradesh, there appears to be a deliberate attempt by
the Modi regime to act slowly on the issue.
.JPG)
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