80-yr-old Cong office unable to pay ₹35 pm rent, told to vacate
ALLAHABAD: The historical City Congress Office, located in the congested Chowk locality in Allahabad, is in trouble.
Reason: Non-payment of monthly rent has invited eviction notice from the building owner.
Astonishingly, the monthly rent of the around 3,000 square feet property is a mere Rs 35.
Still, the party has failed to pay the paltry amount for decades and it has now accumulated to over Rs 50,000. While the building owner — Raj Kumar Saraswat — had served the notice for eviction earlier this year too, he has now asked the grand old party to pay the amount or vacate the premises by July end.
The office is almost eight decades’ old and has been a witness to the freedom struggle.
Senior leaders like PD Tandon, Kamla Nehru and Indira Gandhi have held several meeting here, confirmed party veterans.
Citing its glorious heritage, the present office-bearers have written a letter to Congress president Rahul Gandhi and UP chief of the party Raj Babbar.
“Efforts are on to pool in money from around 250 officebearers and activists of City Congress Committee and pay up the dues,” said Kishore Varshney, spokesperson, Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC).
“It is ironical that the party, whose expenditure runs in several crores, could not manage to pay the monthly rent of Rs 35 for the past several years,” quipped a social activist.