New Delhi. BSP supremo Mayawati has got a big relief from the Supreme Court today on the occasion of her birthday. The Supreme Court has closed the hearing on a PIL filed against him in 2009. This petition was filed in the case of Mayawati getting statues of her and her party’s election symbol elephant installed and a memorial built at government expense in Lucknow and Noida, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. Petitioner lawyer Ravikant had demanded that the Supreme Court should order the Election Commission to confiscate the election symbol of BSP and the misuse of public money should be recovered.
The petitioner had alleged misuse of Rs 2600 crore from the government treasury. Now the Supreme Court, while disposing of this PIL, has said that this is an old matter and if the statues are asked to be removed, then the government’s expenses will also increase, hence the hearing on this petition is closed. In the timely hearings, the Supreme Court had reprimanded the UP government. The UP government had argued that the construction of the memorials has been approved by the state cabinet.
Even in 2019, the bench headed by the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Ranjan Gogoi had also made strict comments on this matter. The bench had said that prima facie it seems that Mayawati should return the expenditure incurred on these statues, however later this case was put on hold. Now after a long time, this case is before Supreme Court Justice B. Reached before the bench of Justice V. Nagarathna and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma. The court said that instead of pursuing this case further, it would be better to settle it now and with this the court closed it.
