‘BJP didn’t spare even god’: MP Cong sees a windfall in Mahakal statue collapse

On Tuesday, the Congress’s in-charge for Madhya Pradesh, J P Agarwal said the Chouhan government “had played with the faith of crores of Indians” by “indulging in corruption” while building the statues.

बाबा महाकाल ने भी रोष प्रकट किया,
— सड़क से संसद तक बीजेपी के महापाप; झूठ, लूट और फूट की सरकार के लिये अशुभ संकेत।

शिवराज जी,
अब आपकी उल्टी गिनती शुरू है। pic.twitter.com/G4RNVyIvca

— MP Congress (@INCMP) May 29, 2023

“In Karnataka, we gave the slogan of ‘40% sarkara’. A similar scam has come to light in Madhya Pradesh. That too in the Mahakal Mandir of Ujjain. The BJP didn’t keep even the sacred Mahakal away from its loot. There couldn’t have been bigger loot in the name of religion. Bhagwaan ko bhi nahin choda (They didn’t spare even god),” Agarwal said.

Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath, who will be the top contender for CM post if the party wins, set up a “fact-finding committee” over the statue collapse, which has submitted its report saying the idols were of “poor quality”.

Former minister and MLA Sajjan Singh Verma, who was part of the committee, said Tuesday: “The statues were made of a weak material. Some nets had to be used as per the tender, but they are made in China and are of weak quality. The BJP keeps shouting at the top of its voice to not use Chinese products, but to make products related to our gods, they used such low-quality material.”

Verma said they were not questioning the use of fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP) to make the statues, “but the material used to make the frames was of poor quality”. According to him, given the religious value of the site, statues should have been made of stone. “At a religious site, having broken idols is forbidden.”

On the back foot, the BJP is trying to pin the blame on the previous Congress governments, including the short-lived Kamal Nath-led one, as the project has been on for long.

Minister of Urban Development and Housing Bhupendra Singh told a press conference that the decision to have FRP idols was taken during the Congress regime, and that a work order for 100 FRP idols costing Rs 7.75 crore was issued on March 7, 2019. The government distributed documents to substantiate this.

As much as Rs 96.97 crore had been spent on the project under their government, Singh said.

“There is no corruption. The Congress is doing dirty politics. They have not given a single evidence of corruption. And if the Congress is making this allegation, the project was under it too and hence it is an acceptance by them that they did corruption.We did our work honestly and with high standards,” Singh said, adding that hurting religious sentiments “has been their (the Congress’s) character”.

The minister added that FRP was commonly used to make idols as artwork “was only possible on such statues”, and that the Akshardham temple in Delhi and several other such projects all had FRP statues. “On statues made of other material, artwork is either not possible or can take a lot of time.”

On the fate of the other idols, Singh said the agency that had built the statues had signed a three-year contract and will replace them.

As for wind causing the idols to fall, the minister said that the Ujjain Commissioner had submitted a report that the storm that day had also caused “several buildings and trees” to fall in the area.

The Mahalok corridor’s lead architect, Krishna Murari Sharma, and the sculptor of the Saptarishi statues, Vijay Podwal, said across India, FRP was used to make statues. Sharma said: “It helps in greatly reducing costs. You also need extremely skilled labour to make stone, bronze or copper sculptures.”

He added that they had carried out all the technical checks needed.

Podwal, who claims he worked for three years on the statues, said: “FRP is used in hi-tech industries like the aeronautical industry as well. The material is lightweight, it can be easily moved and is durable compared to metal and wood, which start to deteriorate over time. If we had made stone sculptures, it would have taken us more than a decade, at a cost five times the budget.”

The Congress is also questioning the award of the contract to a Gujarat-based company.

Just a week after the project had been inaugurated by the PM, Ujjain Congress MLA Mahesh Parmar had approached the Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta alleging financial irregularities in the construction, following which notices were issued to 15 officials.

Parmar says officials misused their position to give tender to Gujarat-based MP Babariya, ignoring tenders quoting lower prices, agreed to design alterations to benefit the contractors in crores, and cleared “undue invoices” without adequate verification.

Parmar told The Indian Express that no action had been taken in the case after the Lokayukta notices, otherwise “today the officials involved in this corruption would have been investigated”. “Bhagwan Mahakal will not forgive these sinners.”

Ironically, before the statues were gone with the wind, the tussle between the Congress and BJP was over credit for the temple corridor. Chouhan loses no chance to assert that it was his government that had conceptualised it, at a cost of Rs 95 crore. Kamal Nath says it was in August 2019 when he was CM that a sketch was finalised of the project, with Rs 300 crore set aside for it.

The final budget is Rs 850 crore as per the PMO.