Heated exchanges were witnessed in the Himachal Pradesh Assembly on Wednesday on the issue of allotment of 22 acres to Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth at Sadhupul in Solan district in 2009.
State Revenue Minister Kaul Singh Thakur revealed that the Cabinet had on February 17 given its nod to reconsider the lease of land to the Yogpeeth that was earlier cancelled by it in February 2013.
The Congress government after coming to power in December 2012 had taken back the land given to the Yogpeeth on a 99 years lease by the previous BJP government because of certain anomalies and undue favours given to the Yog Guru, he said.
Necessary formalities
The incumbent government would remove all irregularities and carry out the necessary formalities before finalising the land deal with the Yogpeeth, he added.
Mr. Thakur claimed that the lease deed was signed in haste during the previous government and it had the signatures of someone else and not that of Acharya Balkrishan of the Yogpeeth who had further given the power of attorney to someone else.
Some multi-storey buildings and hospitality units were being constructed there when the government took repossession of the land, he said.
The Minister also maintained that if the Yogpeeth takes back its writ in the High Court against the government for illegally cancelling its lease deed, the incumbent government would take a relook at the matter and again register the lease in its name after carrying out the necessary preconditions.
Some of the Congress MLAs also requested the government to not renew the lease deed with the Yogpeeth since it had openly violated the conditions in the memorandum and instead an orphanage or shelter for stray cattle should be constructed on the let out land.
‘Unnecessary move’
The BJP members blamed the government for unnecessarily cancelling the lease to the Yogpeeth earlier which was constructing a herbal garden and a branch of the Patanjali Yog Centre on behalf of its Trust.
Leader of the Opposition Prem Kumar Dhumal and other BJP members wanted to know why the government was now planning to reinstate the lease deed in favour of Baba Ramdev who is close to the upper echelons of the Union government.
