The lone battle of a Gandhiwaadi to bring Swacchta at Bapu’s memorial

Last year on 30^th November, Supreme Court gave an order mandating the nation anthem should be played before screening films in theatres. And the person who fought the matter legally is a Bhopal based social activist Shyam Narayan Chouksey.

But winning that battle was not enough to cheer Mr. Chouksey patriotism. Now he is battling up with another issue on which almost every Indian will provide support to Mr. Chouksey, 77, who retired as an engineer with the Central Warehousing Corporation in 2000. This time he has filed a PIL in Delhi Highcourt against the irregularities which has caused Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial ‘Rajghat’ to remain in bad conditions.  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who himself hails from Mahatma Gandhi’s land of Gujarat is singing songs of Swacch Bharat but his own government has failed to keep the memorial of ‘Father of nation’ in good condition. According to an RTI, over Rs 4 crores are being spent on the maintenance of Rajghat annually, still things are not at place there.

Entering Bapu’s memorial Rajghat makes the petitioner SN Chouksey, angry as all he sees there is cigarette sticks, damaged wooden pieces, broken tiles, cracked taps, plastic wrappers and dirty toilets which in turn become breeding place for mosquitoes. He has also found that the white marble closer to the monument has gone black due to lack of cleaning and the green carpet has got damaged. In his own words “Bapu used to tell that Swacchta cleanliness is more important than Swadhinta (Independence) but his own Samadhi is craving for that. Where is the allocated money going?” He is also not happy with keeping a donation box near to Mahatma’s Samadhi.

In the petition filed through advocates Abhinav Shrivastava and Sameer Jain, Chouksey submitted photos of the various deficiencies that he had come across when he had visited the monument in past few years, when he claims the situation had worsened. 

He sought directions to MoUD to "stringently apply principles of cleanliness and sanitation at the Rajghat Samadhi, failing which the Ministry should be held liable and penalised for the same and to issue strict instructions to the President and Secretary of the Rajghat Samadhi Committee to perform their duties strictly as provided under the Act and Rules and to make the Rajghat Samadhi a world class monument".

The petition has also sought directions to the Rajghat Samadhi Committee "to carry out repair and maintenance work. To ensure proper maintenance and upkeep of the Samadhi a mechanism should be evolved by MoUD so that once the things are set right at the Samadhi similar situation should not develop again in future. For this, the government may form an independent committee of experts such as civil engineer, public health engineer, expert from horticulture department and expert in Gandhian philosophy."

According to him, he has fought for 11 long years to make sure National Anthem being played in movie theatres and he will not stop until the holy place gets its glory back. So far, in total 6 hearings has been happened at Delhi Highcourt over the same matter and he is hopeful that it won’t take too long to reach out to a conclusion, unlike before. Mr. Chouksey used to visit Rajghat thrice a year, he captures pictures there and submit the same in court.

Being a Gandhiwaadi, cleanliness always remain in his priority list and he believes one day India will become clean as Bapu wished for long ago.