Mayawati: If Ram statue OK, why not mine?

NEW DELHI: Riled by the attention a petition questioning construction of her statues along with other Dalit leaders in UP during her chief ministership is attracting, BSP chief Mayawati on Tuesday asked why no such objections were being raised over a proposed 221-metre statue of Lord Ram in Ayodhya.

The Bahujan Samaj Party leader’s affidavit in the Supreme Court recalled a well established tradition of installing statues. “Memorials and installation of statues is not a new phenomenon in India. During the Congress regime, the Centre and state agencies installed statues of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narasimha Rao across the country with public funds... But neither the media not the petitioners have raised any question with respect to them,” she said in her affidavit filed through advocate Shail Dwivedi.

Citing construction of a 182-metre statue of Sardar Patel by Gujarat government at a cost of Rs 3,000 crore of public funds, Mayawati said the Yogi Adityanath government was planning a statue of Lord Ram with an initial cost of Rs 200 crore for acquisition of land, testing, design development and project report.

She also cited the example of state funding for statues of Shivaji in Mumbai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Lucknow, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy across undivided Andhra Pradesh, the proposed 350-feet Mother Cauvery statue in Mandya in Karnataka at a cost of Rs 3,000 crore, N T Rama Rao’s statue in Amaravati at a cost of Rs 155 crore and that of J Jayalalithaa at Marina beach, Chennai, at a cost of Rs 50 crore.

The Dalit leader said she had endeared herself to the masses as she had decided to remain unmarried and dedicate her life to uplifting the downtrodden and it was the will of the people that forced the state legislature to approve budgetary sanction for memorials and statues, including that of her.

“My statues came to be installed as the will of the state legislature representing the will of the people. However, some disgruntled elements could not digest such an amount of respect for a Dalit woman leader and they resorted to invoking the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and the Allahabad High Court by filing PILs raising the issue of construction of memorials and installation of statues of the chief minister,” she said.

“All the expenditure incurred for construction of the memorials and installation of the statues form part of the Appropriation Act passed by the UP assembly after discussion and voting by the MLAs... Issue of utilisation of funds for a particular purpose is more a debatable question for political and moral purposes rather than a legal issue,” she said and sought dismissal of the petition filed by Ravi Kant and another.

On the issue of installation of statues of elephants, the election symbol of BSP, Mayawati said the animal was also the election symbol of the Republican Party founded by B R Ambedkar. The statues of elephants at the memorials were more for ornamental purposes and not for promotion of BSP, she said.

Elephant statues are found in temples, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Raj Bhavans and also figures in currency notes of Rs 10 denomination, she said, adding that the inspiration for installing elephant statues at Dalit memorials was taken from Rashtrapati Bhavan.