MLA evicted from bungalow

Describing the Congress' protests as "wrong", the Uttarakhand government on Wednesday said the eviction of MLA Kishore Upadhyay from his official residence was done after completing legal proceedings. In a statement, state media advisory committee chairman Devendra Bhasin said Upadhyay was illegally occupying for the last four years the bungalow allotted to him when he was a minister in the previous Congress government. When BJP government came to power in 2007, Upadhyay was allotted a house in MLA transit hostel and was requested to vacate the house at Yamuna Colony, Bhasin said. Later, the government also sent several letters to the Congress MLA but no response was received from his side, he added.

Last year, a case was registered against him by the state estates department in a Dehradun court which ordered Upadhyay to immediately vacate the house and pay Rs 8,750 per month as rent from March 13, 2007 till he vacates the house, Bhasin said. Bhasin said the bungalow has now been allotted to state Disaster Management Minister Khajan Das. However, this illegal occupant of the bungalow, Upadhyay accused the the Uttarakhand government of deliberately harassing him. He alleged that chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and several other BJP MLAs were also illegally occupying official premises and wondered as to why similar action is not initiated against them. He charged the government with adopting different standards for MLAs belonging to BJP and those belonging to Congress. He said there should be a proper policy in place in this regard.

The state estates department team along with police broke open the doors of Upadhyay's bungalow and shifted his belongings to an MLA transit hostel on June 26.