NEW DELHI, MARCH 7: French Queen Marie Antoinette, seeing hungry peasants protesting for food outside her palace had remarked: ``If they don't have bread, why don't they eat cake.'' The French revolution followed.But, Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna, choosing to ignore history, is now embroiled in a controversy over giving clearance to a plan for placing the world's largest cake at Rajpath, in the name of charity.Khanna has been made the chief patron of the event. A stage is to be erected at Rajpath and celebrities are likely to be flown in from Mumbai. There are also plans of hiring a helicopter for an aerial view of the largest cake. The traffic on Rajpath will be blocked on March 14 evening and the street will remain closed for vehicular traffic overnight.``Chief Secretary PV Jayakrishnan is heading a special cell to ensure there are no hitches in the successful completion of the event,'' says Sanjeev Handa, Director, Fourth Dimension, the events management company handling the cakeshow.``Government school children get four slices of dry bread in the name of midday meal. And we have been ordered to facilitate the chefs of hotels like the Hilton, Maurya Shereton and the Taj Group in realising their dream of entering the Guinness book for the world's largest cake - 82.5 tonnes and almost 3.5 kilometres long - to be displayed at Rajpath,'' remarked an angry corporation officer.One of Delhi's oldest residents and veteran journalist Khushwant Singh, whose father Sir Sobha Singh helped build New Delhi said the event ``appeared to be some kind of gimmickry''. Speaking to the The Indian Express, Singh said: ``It is rather silly of the Government to have permitted this. Especially the blocking of Rajpath overnight.''``The event will benefit the chefs, the hotels and the tourist industry giving them publicity,'' Singh added. The `India cake at India Gate', according to Handa, ``would never have taken off but for the cooperation of the Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna. Can youimagine somebody permitting us the use of Rajpath for such a function had he not been behind it,'' he said.Anurag Khemka, senior executive officer of the Krishna Event Marketing company, said they were selling the space on the cake table.``Rs 15,000 for a 10 feet-by-two feet banner,'' he said. ``About 2,000 banners will be used,'' he added. That means just through banners, the money raked in would be a whopping Rs 3 crore.But for some reason neither Handa nor Khemka revealed how much money was going into making the event possible, in the preparation of the cake and how much of the proceeds would actually go to charity. Patriotic fervour apart, even Hadna agrees his firm is not doing this for free. ``Just the costs, no profits,'' he adds.The police are fuming. ``March 15 is the day for the Parliament to the sworn in. There will be a large number of VIPs going to the Parliament. And so many people would be on Rajpath. Anyone could plant a bomb,'' says a senior New Delhi district policeofficial.Despite repeated attempts Khanna could not be contacted. Raj Nivas spokesman Issrar Ahmed said he knew of the meeting the L-G had with the chefs regarding the matter but did not know what transpired.
