Social justice minister Rajkumar Badole has assured that no more funds from the Mahatma Phule Magasvargiya Vikas Mandal, an organisation committed to the welfare of Dalits, would be used for purchasing the London house where Babasaheb Ambedkar had stayed 1921-22.
Social justice minister Rajkumar Badole has assured that no more funds from the Mahatma Phule Magasvargiya Vikas Mandal, an organisation committed to the welfare of Dalits, would be used for purchasing the London house where Babasaheb Ambedkar had stayed 1921-22.
In response to a report in dna's February 20 edition, Badole sought to clarify state's stand on why Rs3.1 crore from Mahamandal was used to pay Simon Ross, a London-based solicitor.
"It is true that we have withdrawn Rs3.1 crore from the funds of Mahatma Phule Magasvargiya Vikas Mandal to pay the solicitor's fee to finalise the deal of Ambedkar's London house, but it was done due to emergency. The house was already on block and we didn't have a corpus for the project yet. However, no more funds would be withdrawn from the Mahamandal for the house," said Badole.
As regards the rest the amount needed to get the house which costs about Rs35 crore, Badole said, "The government would allocate rest of funds for the house in the budget."
Badole said, "Purchase of the house is an emotional issue for Dalits and the government has decided to use the welfare funds only for the time being. We would try to replenish the Mahamandal's funds from the government's corpus later."
Highlighting the tokenism of the government, dna had reported in its Friday edition that instead of using money from own corpus for purchase of the house, the Devendra Fadnavis government had diverted Rs3.1 crore from the Mahatma Phule Magasvargiya Mahamandal, a state-run corporation which looks after training and self-employment of the people from schedule caste and tribe categories.
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