The Supreme Court on Monday slapped a show-cause notice on Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati for misusing public money to erect her own statues and popularising her Bahujan Samaj Party’s poll symbol elephant, and the Election Commission for overlooking such behaviour. The court has given them one month to file their responses.
The court was responding to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by lawyer Ravi Kant alleging that Mayawati has spent about Rs2,000 crore from the public exchequer on glorifying herself and her mentor Kanshi Ram. The Election Commission has to examine whether the installation of pillars with elephant heads would prejudice the electorate.
A bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and AK Ganguly asked the respondents why the PIL should not be admitted for hearing. The PIL seeks an immediate stop to Mayawati’s ongoing state-wide statute-erection programme and a CBI probe into her misuse of public money.
“Every action taken by the government must be in public interest. The government cannot act arbitrarily and without reason and if it does, its action would be liable to be invalidated,” Kant says in the petition, which he based on replies of the state government to an application he filed under the Right to Information Act.
Fearing possible intervention by the court over the PIL, which was filed last week, Mayawati unveiled the statues at Lucknow’s Ambedkar Park, ahead of schedule, on Sunday.
But her arch rival Samjawadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav has warned that when he returns to power, he would dismantle the statutes.
