Lack of maintenance of the Rajghat, a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, and insufficient public facilities like drinking water and toilets, today shocked the Delhi High Court which ordered an immediate inspection of the site and its restoration.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar said the memorial to the Father of the Nation was visited by people from across the world and it deserves to be respected and maintained properly.
The bench even pulled up the Rajghat Samadhi Committee, entrusted with maintaining the memorial, and the Central Public Works Department (CPWD), saying even if they were not aware of the problems earlier, once the PIL was filed, how did they fail to perform their statutory duties.
"We (the court) are not here to direct you (authorities), how to maintain toilets and issue directions to carry out the repair and maintenance works," it said, adding it was their statutory duty to preserve and protect the sacred place.
It ordered immediate inspection of the site and directed the CPWD chief engineer to personally visit the place and point out the deficiencies. It asked the chief engineer to submit a detailed status report with regard to the work needed to be done to protect the memorial.
"Emergent steps to be undertaken to ensure that the work identified shall be done," the bench said and sought the details from the authorities by the next date of hearing on December 4.
The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) alleging that the monument set up in the memory of Mahatma Gandhi was not being properly maintained.
Petitioner, Shyam Narayan Chouksey has claimed that the samadhi of Gandhi "was not at all being properly and cleanly maintained", and despite being brought to the notice of the Committee and Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), there has been no change in the situation.
The Committee, however, refuted the allegations and said that CPWD was responsible for its upkeep. It had earlier claimed before the court that the samadhi and its premises were well-maintained.
In the PIL filed through advocates Abhinav Shrivastava, Chouksey submitted photos of various deficiencies that he had come across during his visit to the monument in 2014 and then again in 2015 and 2016, when he claimed the situation had worsened.
Referring to deficiencies, he has alleged there are betel stains at the entrance, broken floor tiles, rubbish lying all around and closer to the monument, the white marble has gone black due to lack of cleaning while the green carpet laid for visitors to walk is damaged.
Even the two toilets were in very poor condition and unclean and at many places sewage lines are exposed and filled with garbage, becoming "breeding place for mosquitoes and other insects".
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