LUCKNOW: Thursday, it seems, was chief minister Mayawati’s day of being on the defensive. Apart from providing excuses on why she had to roll back the new agricultural policy less than a month after announcing it, the feisty Dalit leader also had to do some explaining on the “gifting” of the BSP’s Lucknow-based “Bahujan Samaj Prerna Kendra” (inspiration centre) to the Bahujan Prerna Trust in which her brother Anand Kumar is a trustee.
“The media is putting out misleading reports about the transfer of the Prerna Kendra to the trust… some channels are deliberately distorting facts,” the UP CM told reporters. She, however, left the press meet in a huff when journalists persisted with queries on the subject.
The Prerna Kendra, houses an urn that contains Kanshi Ram’s ashes, was inaugurated on June 3, 2005.
Originally owned by the Bahujan Samaj Party, the kendra has been “donated” as a “gift” to the Trust headed by Mayawati herself. Her brother Anand Kumar is the authorised signatory of the Trust in the gift deed. Party general secretary and Minister Babu Singh Kushwaha, one of Mayawati’s most trusted minions, has signed the deed on behalf of the BSP.
Meanwhile, the BSP in its defence, came out with a written statement which read, “Bahujan Prerna Trust is a legal entity like the BSP, and the same has now become the absolute owner of the property and not Sri Anand Kumar who has only signed the gift deed as the authorised signatory of the Trust being one of the trustees.”
“The gift deed clearly states that the BSP is the donor and the Trust, a registered charitable trust under the Indian Trust Act, is the donee. So legally also, there is nothing wrong with such a transfer,” Satish Chandra Misra, BSP national general secretary told DNA
