Yogi targets Congress office in Lucknow

An attempt is being made to evict Congress from its headquarters in Lucknow as the Lucknow Nagar Nigam has served notice to Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee to submit documents to prove that Nehru Bhawan – the building that houses Uttar Pradesh Congress Headquarters - belongs to them.

The notice has been issued following a claim made by a trader Manish Agarwal from Gomti Nagar that Nehru Bhawan belongs to his family. He claims to have relevant papers and has submitted the same to the Nagar Nigam, Lucknow. The sudden claim by Agarwal and the alacrity with which the Nagar Nigam has acted and issued notice to Congress has raised eye brows.

Agarwal in his complaint has claimed that property 15 Mall Avenue (6/10) was bought in an auction of Rehabilitation Department of the Government on April 29,1961, at the cost of ₹1.75 lakh. When CB Gupta was the Chief Minister he gave one room of that building to Congress. He claims that 1986 Mohsina Kidwai’s name was added to those papers fraudulently.”

The present address of Congress office is 10 Mal Avenue but the old documents have it as 15 Mall Avenue comprising 6/10.

The tax inspector of the Nagar Nigam, Narendra Verma, served a notice to Mohsina Kidwai on Tuesday stating that they do not have the relevant documents to show that the building belongs to Congress or Mohsina Kidwai.

“Congress should submit relevant documents with the Nagar Nigam so that enquiry in this case could be carried out judiciously,” the notice said.

Congress, however, claims this whole exercise is an attempt by Bharatiya Janata Party to harass Congress. “BJP is feeling the pinch because Congress has raised farmers’ issues regularly. The party has exposed BJP as how its leaders have misbehaved with officials and had even beaten them up. As BJP cannot match Congress politically it has found a new method to harass us,” said Amarnath Agarwal, the Congress spokesman.

If this property actually belonged to someone else why has he remained silent for so many years, asked the Congress spokesman. “This smacks of conspiracy,” he said.

UP Congress vice president and chairman Satyadeo Tripathi said the property was bought in an auction in 1978 by Mohsin Kidwai. We have all relevant documents on our side. The complainant had showed the papers of 1961 to the Nagar Nigam while the auction was done on 1978 when the building was purchased, he said.

“When the Congress purchased it, senior BJP leader such as Kalyan Singh, Keshri Nath Tripathi were ministers and Tripath was the institutional finance minister, whose department auctioned it,” said Tripathi, adding, “The property of the Congress was then a sugar mill whose owners had defaulted government taxes and thus it was auctioned.

He further alleged that now Yogi Adityanath government was hatching conspiracy to destabilise the Congress in UP.