Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje was at the centre of a fresh controversy on Monday for “illegally occupying” the Dholpur Palace.
The Congress said Raje and her “business partner” former IPL chief Lalit Modi turned the palace into a luxury hotel despite it being a “government property”. The opposition party also released documents to buttress its claim that the palace, home to the Dholpur royal family, was declared government property six times between 1954 and 2010.
Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh also furnished an affidavit given to a Dholpur Court by Raje’s estranged husband Hemant Singh that the palace was property of the government.
Ramesh claimed that Raje, her son Dushyant, his wife Niharika and Lalit Modi invested Rs 100 crore in a company Niyant Heritage Hotels Private Limited (NHHPL) that developed the palace into a hotel.
Countering the charges, Rajasthan unit of the BJP, at a press conference in Jaipur, produced another set of documents to claim that the palace was the personal property of Dushyant.
Rajasthan BJP President Ashok Parnami also claimed that the National Highway Authority of India paid Rs 1.57 crore as compensation to Dushyant when it acquired a portion of the palace land for a highway project in 2011.
Parnami said Dushyant was the legal heir of Dholpur royal family and the ownership of all the properties rest with him since 2007.
However, there was lot of commotion at the press conference and Parnami and state Health Minister Rajendra Rathore did not take questions from the media.