Observing that the matter is too old, the Supreme Court on Wednesday disposed of a petition filed against former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati for building her life-size statues and of elephants, her party’s symbol, in the state with crores in public money.
The decision comes on the day Mayawati is celebrating her 69th birthday.
The top court was hearing a 2009 petition against the profusion of statues of Mayawati, her mentor Kanshi Ram and elephants – her party Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)’s symbol – built at parks in Lucknow and Noida with taxpayers’ money when she was chief minister between 2007 and 2012.
The statues of bronze, cement and marble had critics accusing her of self-obsession and megalomania.
The petition claimed that installing sixty elephant statues at a cost of Rs 52.20 crore is a waste of public money and runs contrary to the directions issued by the Election Commission.
It also claimed that public money was being spent for personal glorification by erecting these life size statues.
At the time, Mayawati claimed that the elephant statues in the memorials were “mere architectural design” and not representative of her party’s symbol, adding that proper budgetary allocation was made for the statues.
The four-time former chief minister had said the memorials were constructed so people would draw inspiration from them and that it represented the “will of the people”.