A plea has been filed in the Supreme Court by Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, challenging the Gujarat High Court order that refused to interfere with the proposed redevelopment of Sabarmati Ashram by the state of Gujarat.
The appeal was put before Chief Justice of India (CJI) N.V. Ramana, seeking urgent listing of the case by Senior Advocate Indira Jaising.
“I need a virtual hearing day. Construction will start,” Jaising said.
“List on a virtual hearing day,” the CJI directed.
The petitioner said that the Gujarat High Court had dismissed the plea and refused to quash the Government Resolution on a “limited misleading statement made by the Advocate General without taking into account the grievances raised by the petitioner”.
The Advocate General had informed the High Court that the Sabarmati Ashram covers an area of one acre, which would remain untouched, and the idea was to develop 55 acres of land surrounding the Ashram.
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In relation to this, the petition stated that the significance of the land was not limited to the one-acre Ashram itself, but covered the entire property on the banks of Sabarmati, which was more than 100 acres.
“The land serves as a source of inspiration and stands as a monument to Gandhiji’s life mission,” the plea said.
In the plea, the petitioner expressed fears that the redevelopment would change the physical structure of Sabarmati Ashram and corrupt its simplicity and frugality, which embodied the ideology of Mahatma Gandhi, thus making it diametrically opposite to Gandhian principles.
“The petitioner is apprehensive that the nature of redevelopment and over-sized involvement of the government authorities in the conception and execution of the said project, the ashram may lose the Gandhian ethos that has been painstakingly preserved by the Trust”
-it was contended.
Further, the petitioner feared that the project would be turned into a commercial tourist attraction that would subsequently be pawned off to a private contractor, to be run merely for profit.