Meet on location to shift statue inconclusive

A high-level meeting held in the Vidhana Soudha on Wednesday, to identify the place to relocate the statue of Dr B R Ambedkar to facilitate Namma Metro work, failed to arrive at a conclusion.

The meeting, attended by the Chief Secretary and senior officials of the Social Welfare, Public Works and other departments, had a long debate. The suggestion to relocate the statue to the West of the Soudha was not received well. It has been decided to hold another meeting on Saturday, said a senior PWD official.

It has been more than 15 days since the government, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited and dalit groups arrived at a consensus before the High Court on shifting the statue. However, they are yet to fix the new location and date for shifting the statue.

During the hearing of a related contempt petition in the High Court, Chief Secretary S V Ranganath filed an affidavit, stating that the government would soon identify the place to relocate the statue.

“We were not able to hold a meeting up to March 11 as the model code of conduct for elections to ULBs was in force,” the affidavit said.

In the affidavit, Ranganath said the High Court, in its earlier order, had permitted the government to undertake the work on relocating the statue without specifying any time period.

The allegation of the petitioner about non-compliance of the previous court order was not maintainable and hence, the contempt petition had to be dropped, the affidavit said.