“Achhe Din”for RSS: Modi Govt Re-allots land cancelled by UPA to RSS affiliated orgs

New Delhi: Narendra Modi’s (in) famous election Jumla ‘Achhe Din’ for the countrymen has proved true only for his men and his organisations if one glances at the track record since he took office of Prime Minister two and a half year ago.

A report published in the Wire says that almost 13 years after the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had cancelled the allotment of institutional land to 29 right-leaning organisations by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in Delhi, the Narendra Modi government has restored the allotment of prime plots of land to most of them. The majority of the 26 plots, which have now been allotted, are situated on Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg in the heart of the city.

It may be noted here that the BJP government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee had made 225 allotments. Those allotments were made between 1998-1999 and September 2004. Since of these 125 were made to government and political institutions, the subsequent Manmohan Singh government that came to power in 2004 did not question their allotment.

Later Manmohan Singh government constituted one –man committee which recommended cancellation of the land allotment to 32 of the remaining 100 institutions that it believed had benefited due to their political affiliations.

Of these, 22 were affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or belonged to outfits backed by it such as Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, Samarth Shiksha Samiti, Sewa Bharti and Swadeshi Jagran Foundation.

The report mentions that in all these cases, the committee had held that the allotments were made “without due regard to the stipulated procedure.” After much deliberation between the urban development ministry and the office of the attorney general on the issue, the UPA government had finally cancelled 29 of these allotments. Thereafter, three of these institutions had returned the plots while the remaining 26 had moved the Delhi high court against the order.

The matter kept hanging till the BJP returned to power, under the leadership of Modi. With a right-wing government back in the saddle, most of these religious and socio-cultural institutions once again felt emboldened and approached the Centre for restoration of the cancelled plots. Many of them had not given up the plots and had even opened temporary offices on them.

However, the Achhe Din has become joke on social media and people are demanding the old days of Bure Din because of the price rise and other social denominators taking a dip under the Modi regime.

Courtesy: Muslim Mirror