Three bulldozers sent by the Yogi Adityanath government demolished twelve buildings of a Gandhian social service organisation in Varanasi during a three-hour operation on Saturday.
Ten Gandhians, who alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath were trying to erase the name of the Mahatma from the country and protested against the action at the gate of the Sarva Sewa Sangh, were arrested. Among the structures demolished was the Gandhi Vidya Sansthan, an institute that holds classes on Gandhian philosophy and was co-founded Jayaprakash Narayan.
Ram Dhiraj, the head of the Sarva Sewa Sangh, told reporters before his arrest: “The Uttar Pradesh government and the Indian Railways have played a dirty trick to target Gandhi. They proved in court with the help of forged papers that the Sangh’s land deal with the railways was illegal. We lost the case in Varanasi and the high court, but hope to prove in the Supreme Court that we had paid the railways for about 13 acres of land. We had submitted documents to support our claim that the deal was finalised after it was approved by Rajendra Prasad, the then President.”
“The government wanted to grab the institute to prevent any study on Gandhi and it seems to have succeeded by demolishing all the buildings even before the case is heard by the Supreme Court,” Dhiraj said. The apex court is yet to hear the Sangh’s appeal.
The government had served a notice to the Sangh in May asking it to vacate the Gandhi Vidya Sansthan and announced that it would be handed over to Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.
Kaushal Raj Sharma, the commissioner of Varanasi, said: “We are only following the orders of the courts.”
The Gandhians allege that the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts is in the control of the Rashtriya Swayamseswak Sangh.
