Mulayam seeks action against Mayawati's top aides

Lucknow, Nov 8 : Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav Sunday urged Uttar Pradesh Governor B.L. Joshi to initiate action against top officials in Chief Minister Mayawati's personal secretariat for allegedly indulging in 'grabbing of private land for the chief minister'.

Accompanied by his close associate Amar Singh, he accused two senior bureaucrats of "intimidating" a former Lok Dal leader's family to give away a chunk of their land in favour of the chief minister.

Along with a memorandum to the governor, the two Samajwadi leaders have submitted a CD with recorded conversations between these two top officials and Sunil Singh, the owner of a prime property in Lucknow's posh Mall Avenue.

Mayawati already has at least five giant bungalows in the VIP locality, either in her own name or in the name of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and its allied trusts and organisations.

The recorded conversations suggest that Mayawati had plans of expanding one of these bungalows (already built on more than 100,000 sq ft of land) for which she wanted a patch of land from the adjoining property owned by Singh, whose father the late Rajendra Singh was a prominent Lok Dal leader.

The bungalow (No 13-A Mall Avenue) was originally allotted to her after her first stint in office in 1996, in keeping with the state's practice of providing one living accommodation to all former chief ministers.

After pumping in crores on its renovation during her two successive regimes, Mayawati, during her fourth term in 2007, felt that the sprawling 40,000 sq feet premises was not enough to suit her lifestyle.

She promptly ordered demolition of the impressive bungalow together with acquisition of an adjoining property housing the office of the state's sugarcane commissioner.

The 70,000 sq feet plot on which the office was located soon became a part of No 13 - A Mall Avenue, where an exquisite brand new bungalow was erected for her "ex-chief ministerial" days. The bungalow was understood to have cost the state exchequer a fat sum of Rs.42 crore.

Singh has already filed a writ petition before the high court to prevent the state government from "grabbing" his property.

In a similar move, not very long ago, Mayawati had made an attempt to usurp yet another private property on the other side of her Rs.42-crore ivory tower.

Its owners - descendants of a former high court judge, Justice Niyamatullah, who spurned Mohammad Ali Jinnah's offer to migrate to Pakistan and assume a top judicial office there - could get relief only with the intervention of the court.

Flaying Maywati for her "obsession" for property, Mulayam Singh Yadav wonders, "What is she going to do with so much property?"

--IANS