New Delhi:
The government has waived almost Rs 2 crore, allegedly owed by Speaker Meira Kumar for use of her father Jagjivan's Ram residence in Delhi.
An RTI query has revealed that Meira Kumar, on getting the bill, said she had vacated the house number 6 at Krishna Menon Marg in November 2002 and so the government decided to withdraw the recovery notice.
The bungalow was allotted to her when she was appointed a Union Minister in 2004. But when she became the Speaker in 2009, Ms Kumar was given a bungalow on Akbar Road. RTI activist Subhash Agarwal had alleged that the Speaker continue to use the bungalow even after she was allotted one on Akbar Road.
The Speaker's office had earlier said her family does not hold the plot anymore; it has been turned into a memorial for Babu Jagjivan Ram. The government had, in 2000, decided not to allow for any bungalows to be turned into memorials in the New Delhi zone.
Babu Jagjivan Ram had earlier stayed on in the bungalow till his death in 1986.