Wah! Taj146;s backdrop stays

It does not get stranger than this. Mayawati, whose government cleared the Heritage Corridor which could change the way the Taj looks, today...

It does not get stranger than this. Mayawati, whose government cleared the Heritage Corridor which could change the way the Taj looks, today ordered a probe to find out how the project took off.

She called a press conference, ordered an inquiry, and claimed that she had come to know about the construction before the newspapers and Jagmohan raised a stink and had immediately ordered a halt.

But today8217;s act could not hide the facts. Sources say the permission for starting construction work was given to the National Project Construction Corporation NPCC following a meeting of the Mission Management Board MMB on August 4 and, later, in October. The state environment ministry had released Rs 17 crore to NPCC as the first instalment of the Rs 175-crore project.

8216;8216;We started the construction work only after getting the money. We were asked to start construction, make a detailed project report and a techno-feasibility report. We follow instructions of our client and in this case it was the state environment ministry. The work started in the first week of December and continued till it came to an abrupt end,8217;8217; M R Arora, chief advisor, NPCC, told The Sunday Express.

The state government had removed Environment Secretary R K Sharma a few days ago. 8216;8216;I have asked the Chief Secretary for a probe into the matter and take stern punitive action against the officers found guilty,8217;8217; Mayawati said.

The CM8217;s Secretariat in Lucknow confirmed today that it had received a letter from Union Minister Jagmohan in connection with the work at Agra. Jagmohan, in a letter which mentions an Express report on the construction work without clearance from local and environmental agencies, had asked the UP government to stop work. 8216;8216;The CM has demanded an in-depth report on the issue while the construction work has been stopped,8217;8217; said a senior official.

Chief Secretary D S Bagga today dismissed the Agra Development Authority8217;s claim that the plan for the Corridor was not scrutinised because it had come from his office.

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8216;8216;I had presided a meeting in November 2002 in which the Heritage Corridor was also among the minutes. I sought a detailed project report on the proposal to scrutinise it and forwarded it for clearance to the Cabinet Committee for Economic affairs, the clearance from which is a must for such projects,8217;8217; Bagga explained.

He also claimed that apart from the Heritage proposal there were at least 20 more projects which were proposed in the same meeting and none had anything to do with the construction work 8212; be it with the mall or a building for any purpose.