The Congress today threatened to take to the streets and move court against the Mayawati government’s decision to extend her dream project, Lucknow’s Ambedkar Udyan, into a 25-acre adjacent plot that was reportedly meant for setting up the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan. Some of the rooms of the institute have been demolished along with the foundation stone.Calling it ‘‘blatant Ambedkarisation’’ of the state capital and an insult to a leader of Indira Gandhi’s stature, state Congress vice-president and former minister Ranjit Singh Judev said today: ‘‘We will oppose the move on the streets and also in court.’’ Senior party leaders are also meeting in Lucknow on September 19 to decide a strategy.Judev said the police had been informed about the ‘‘demolition’’ of the walls, some rooms and the foundation stone of the Pratishthan by the Lucknow Development Authority and municipal corporation officials yesterday, but they had done nothing. The Pratishthan had been inaugurated in 1989 by then chief minister N.D. Tiwari and a temporary boundary wall had been constructed there.According to Judev, the Mayawati government wanted to use the land for building a museum and a research centre on BSP ideologue Ambedkar. But the state government claims that former governor Romesh Bhandari had in 1996 cancelled the Indira Gandhi project on the piece of land and directed that it be used to build a hotel.Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who has been informed about the incident, will reportedly take it up with Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee when he returns from abroad. Vajpayee represents Lucknow in Parliament. Party MP Motilal Vora has already written a letter to Mayawati, complaining that the land which her government was taking over was earmarked for the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan.
