Former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati has got a big relief from the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, January 15, the court has disposed of the PIL filed against him and his party's symbol elephant statues being made by spending crores of rupees from the government treasury during the Chief Minister's tenure. The Supreme Court has stopped hearing on the petition filed against Mayawati.
The court closed the hearing considering the petition filed 15 years ago as an old case. In 2009, Supreme Court lawyer Ravikant had filed a petition, in which he had demanded that the money should be recovered from the Bahujan Samaj Party for misusing public money. Apart from this, it was also said in the petition that making statues of the party's election symbol elephant in parks with public money is wrong and the Supreme Court should order the Election Commission to confiscate the election symbol of BSP.
However, the court did not accept the petitioner's demand. The bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma, while disposing of the petition filed by two lawyers Ravikant and Sukumar, said that most of the petitions have become infructuous. The bench said that the Election Commission has already issued guidelines on this issue and the installation of the statues cannot be banned as they have already been installed.
In fact, when Mayawati was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, during her tenure from 2007 to 2012, she had constructed two big parks in the capital Lucknow and Noida. Many statues of Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, BSP founder Kanshi Ram, party's election symbol elephant and herself (Mayawati) were installed in these parks. These sculptures were made of stone and bronze.
The petition filed by the lawyers claimed that installing sixty elephant statues at a cost of Rs 52.20 crore is a waste of government money and is contrary to the instructions issued by the Election Commission. At that time, Mayawati had said that the elephant statues in the parks were mere architectural designs and were not representative of her party's symbol. He had said that proper budget allocation was made for the statues. This work of Mayawati was heavily criticized by her opponents. A case was also registered against him.
