Cong slams Centre on Ajit Singh’s eviction issue

Cong slams Centre on Ajit Singh''s eviction issueNEW DELHI: Congress today slammed the Centre over the row surrounding the eviction order of the bungalow given to former Union Minister Ajit Singh saying it was “unbecoming” as the Centre hardened its stand on the issue.

The JD (U) again shot off a letter to Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu demanding that Singh’s residence, 12 Tughlaq Road, be declared a memorial in the name of former Prime Minister and farmer leader Chaudhary Charan Singh.

A day after Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda supported the demand to turn Singh’s residence into a memorial, Congress spokesperson Salman Khurshid said,” the manner in which this is being done, conducted towards people, who have been in the high office, is unbecoming.

“…to make a spectacle of it by disconnecting water and electricity supply is extremely reprehensible…the manner in which it is being carried out was unbecoming and reprehensible of a democratically elected government,” he said from the official podium of the AICC.

Khurshid at the same time refused to wade into the issue of memorial saying he can’t say anything on it as it was a policy matter and a new government was already in place.

Maintaining that the government was bound by rules, Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu had said why the RLD leader or Congress did not convert the house into memorial for Charan Singh when they were in power.

The Urban Development Minister insisted that there was no political vendetta involved in the decision to evict Ajit Singh from government residence.

RLD supporters had threatened to disconnect water connection to Delhi after the NDMC snapped water and power supply to the former Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh’s 12 Tughlaq Road residence which he has refused to vacate though he is no longer eligible to occupy it.

In a letter to Naidu, JD (U) general secretary KC Tyagi said that crores of people in the country have the same respect for farmer leader late Charan Singh as there is respect among Congressmen for Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi and among BJP workers for Shyama Prasad Mukherjee and Deen Dayal Upadhyay.

“The government of India has built memorials in the name of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Jagjivan Ram, Kanshi Ram and other big leaders, which we welcome. At the same time, we demand that 12 Tughlaq Road be immediately declared a national memorial and the demand of lakhs of farmers should be fulfilled,” Tyagi said in the letter.–PTI