Privilege & Illegality A recent Right To Information (RTI) reply has revealed that the UPA government had waived a Rs 1.98 crore house rent bill of former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar for the 6 Krishna Menon Marg bungalow she had occupied. The plea had been filed by RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal at the Ministry of Urban Development. He was informed that no records were available with it for the waiver of the rent.

The bungalow was allotted to Kumar’s father and former union minister Babu Jagjiwan Ram and then passed on to his widow Indrani Devi. After her mother’s death, Kumar converted the bungalow into an unofficial memorial to her father and retained it.

Successive government’s failed to act In a note sent to the media, Agrawal said that all concerned departments have responded to the query, it had been “confirmed” that the Rs 1.98 crore rent bill was “cancelled” by the UPA regime without any request on record. Agarwal demanded the Central government to re-generate the rent bill for recovery because the bungalow was kept forcibly and illegally occupied as an unofficial memorial. He alleged that the successive central governments deliberately kept it “unallocated” even after knowing that it was an unofficial memorial.

Denied Charan Singh A Memorial The RTI activist had earlier pointed out a historic precedent, regarding the current government not allowing Jat leader Ajit Singh to convert the 12 Tughlaq Road bungalow into a memorial of his father (former prime minister Charan Singh). The RTI activist has demanded that the 25-year lease of the 6 Krishna Menon Marg bungalow be cancelled and allotted to someone genuinely entitled to its possession.