This is at stark contrast with the previous announcements made by several ministers including Rajkumar Badole, who handles the social justice portfolio. Interestingly, no government resolution pertaining to the purchase ever mentioned what the government intended to do with the bungalow.
Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar's London bungalow is possibly the best example in recent times of how tokenism and vote-bank politics take precedence over welfare of people.
It has emerged that the three-storey bungalow, which was purchased by the Maharashtra government last year amid the controversy of spending a whopping Rs32 crore for it, will not house Dalit students at all. In fact, there was never any proposal to set up a hostel for Dalit or other students at the bungalow, highly-placed sources at the social justice and special assistance department told dna. The department acts as the nodal agency for the entire project of developing the bungalow.
This is at stark contrast with the previous announcements made by several ministers including Rajkumar Badole, who handles the social justice portfolio. Interestingly, no government resolution pertaining to the purchase ever mentioned what the government intended to do with the bungalow.
dna has learnt that the bungalow is set to be converted into a memorial and library related to Ambedkar's work, for which Badole is set to make another trip to London soon.
Incidentally, the money spent by Maharashtra government to acquire the property at plush 10 King Henry Road in London was drawn from the Mahatma Phule Magasvargiya Vikas Mahamandal (roughly translated as Mahatma Phule Backward Class Development Corporation). This included the bungalow's cost, solicitor's fee and expenses of London trips of ministers and babus.
Ironically, the corporation is meant for financial assistance of below poverty line OBCs, SCs and neo-Buddhists.
dna had highlighted this matter in several news reports last year. The government had then claimed it had loaned the amount and it would be replaced later, a promise which is yet to be realised.
While official statements regarding the usage of the bungalow were vague in nature since beginning, Badole himself had given an impression that setting up a Dalit hostel in that property was also being considered, apart from constructing an Ambedkar memorial and a library to showcase his work. The bungalow was inaugurated by prime minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis in November last year when both were visiting UK for a business meet.
This had given a hope to potential Dalit students as a hostel would not only have given them a chance to stay under the same roof where the Dalit icon once lived while studying at London School of Economics in 1921-22, but also would cut down their boarding expenses considerably.
Europe, especially London, is considered as one of the costliest places in the world where a significant portion of education expense goes into hostel fee.
"There was no such proposal to establish the hostel for Dalits students at the London property," Ujjwal Uke, the secretary of social justice and special assistance department said.
Interestingly, corporation which funded the project has no clue who the owner of that property was. An RTI query in this regard filed by activist Anil Galgali a couple of months ago stated that the corporation had no clue about the owner.
Even the total deal amount of Rs32 crore was transferred to the solicitor M/s Sedon's account, rather than the owner of the property, said the RTI response.
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