The Patna High Court sought a reply from the union and the state government by January 3 over the pitiable state of affairs of the memorials at Jiradei in Bihar, the birthplace of the country’s first President Dr Rajendra Prasad.
A division bench headed by Chief Justice Sanjay Karol sought a reply while hearing a Public Interest Litigation.
The court has constituted a three-member team of lawyers to visit the Memorials and ascertain the actual status of the infrastructure and give suggestions as to how best the memorials at all the three places can be improved at the birthplace of Dr Rajendra Prasad.
Patna High Court said that this team will give a report to the court in the next hearing after looking at the condition of Jiradei and the memorial located there, Sadaqat Ashram in Patna, and the memorial located at Bansghat. The court was told that the condition of Jiradei village, where Dr. Rajendra Prasad’s ancestral house and memorial is located, had deteriorated.
The petitioner Vikas Kumar said that the basic facilities are negligible in Jiradei. Neither the condition of the road to reach there is good nor the condition of his house and memorial located in the village is good. The court was told that the plight of Patna’s Sadaqat Ashram and their related monuments at Bansghat is also visible. Therefore, there is a need to take action on a war footing by the Central and State Governments to improve its situation soon, the petitioner said.
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Jiradei, the ancestral village of Dr Rajendra Prasad is about 12 km away from Siwan district headquarters. It was declared an archaeological site by the efforts of the then Prime Minister Chandrashekhar Singh. Bhanu Singh, the caretaker of Rajendra Babu’s ancestral residence, says that here in 1927, Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, observed a silent fast from eight o’clock on the night of 17 January to eight o’clock in the night of 18 January.