JOIN USSacked 'crorepati' minister was BPL a decade ago
Former Uttar Pradesh minister for mining Gayatri Prajapati, who officially owned properties worth around Rs 1.83 crore, figured in the list of BPL (below poverty line) over a decade ago.
Prajapati, an MLA from Amethi Assembly segment in Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi’s Lok Sabha constituency, was sacked along with another minister Raj Kishore Singh by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Monday following charges of corruption and land grabbing.
According to the sources in Amethi, Prajapti featured in the BPL list in 2002. In his affidavit filed with the Election Commission during the 2012 Assembly polls, he had declared properties worth Rs 1.83 crore.
Social activists, however, claimed that Prajapati was worth several hundred crores.
In a complaint filed with the state Lokayukta, social activist Nutan Thakur had charged that Prajapati and his family members owned companies and lands worth several hundred crores in Lucknow and Amethi.
Nutan had also charged that Prajapati had been extending patronage to illegal mining mafias in several parts of the state and sought a probe against him. The activist had also said that Prajapati had conspired to implicate her husband and IPS officer Amitabh Thakur in a fake rape case after she moved Lokayukta against the politician.
Another activist from Pratapgarh district had also lodged a complaint against Prajapati with the Lokayukta charging that the sacked minister owned properties worth Rs 300 crores illegally.
A woman from Amethi had charged Prajapati with forcibly grabbing her house.
It was also charged that Prajapati’s daughter was a beneficiary of the state government’s ‘Kanya Vidya Dhan’, under which poor girls were provided financial assistance for studies.
Prajapati was considered to be an influential backward caste leader and had defeated Amita Singh, wife of Congress Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh, who was the scion of Amethi royal family, in the previous Assembly elections.