Swaraj Abhiyan today asked the Centre to evict Delhi Race Course Club from the site within August 9 and set up a farmers' memorial there acknowledging the "historical wrongs" against the agrarian community in the name of land acquisition.
Senior leaders of the group, Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan also asked AAP government to direct two of its serving officials, who are "members of the managing committee" of the club, to not be party to this "private profiteering".
They said if the government takes no action in this regard, they would put up an installation of pitchers collected from across the country as part of its 'Jai Kisan Andolan', scheduled to culminate in Delhi on August 10 through a tractor march to Parliament.
"The lease of the authorities running the Race Course has expired as well. On what basis are they indulging in gambling right under the Prime Minister's nose in such a strategic location? Evict them or else we will install pitchers there taking the first step towards setting up a memorial," Yadav told reporters.
Bhushan said through this move, they were trying to highlight the larger issue of "misuse" of land already available to government and the dilution of 2013 Land Acquisition Act's key clauses.
"There is shockingly large amount of land, amounting to nearly 1.5 hectares, acquired by the government for purposes of defence, railway, industry and SEZ that lies unused or misutilised but despite that government is hell bent on usurping more land," Bhushan added quoting "official data".
On Delhi High Court asking AAP government to give details of the money spent on advertisements allegedly glorifying Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and AAP, Bhushan said the ads were put up for "political propaganda".
"High Court has asked for details since the ads were against the Supreme Court guidelines and amounted to political propaganda using government money. Only avoiding putting up pictures is not enough," he said.
