Azam’s wife offers to fund another Urdu Gate

His office has received letter from Rajya Sabha MP and some of its contents are overtly political

LUCKNOW : Two days after officials in Rampur razed the ‘Urdu Gate’ of Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar University, triggering protests and taunts from university founder and Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, his wife and Rajya Sabha MP Tazeen Fatima has offered her MP fund to build another gate. In a sarcastic missive to the Rampur district magistrate AK Singh, Fatima has said she was ready to offer Rs 25 lakh from her MP fund for the construction of the gate in the name of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.

LUCKNOW : Two days after officials in Rampur razed the ‘Urdu gate’ of Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar University, triggering protests and taunts from university founder and Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, his wife and Rajya Sabha MP Tazeen Fatima has offered her MP fund to build another gate.

In a sarcastic missive to the Rampur district magistrate AK Singh, Fatima has said she is ready to offer Rs 25 lakh from her MP fund for the construction of the gate in the name of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.

After the ‘Urdu gate’ was razed, Rampur DM had said they would request the government to consider seeking recovery of the amount spent on construction of gate that was built against norms and without seeking prior consent.

“My office has just received the letter from the MP. We are looking into the contents of the letter, some of which are overtly political, and hence there is little

for us to comment,” the DM told HT on phone.

The ‘political’ part DM referred to pertains to the portion of the missive where Khan’s wife has also suggested the place of the said gate, the place where the now demolished Mori or Urdu gate stood.

“You can also decide the height of the gate and the construction agency so that overloaded vehicles could enter unhindered into the city and illegal mining could be done,” she said adding she was ready to pay more if additional fund was required for the construction of the gate.

Officials of the public works department had said the Urdu gate was demolished because its height was 2.9 meters when it should have ideally been 4.5 meters.

“This was against norms and was obstructing traffic movement,” PWD’s superintending engineer Sanjeev Kumar Verma said. Azam Khan had, however, said the gate was demolished because it was named ‘Urdu gate.’

“I had told the officials that if Urdu was the cause of discontent among BJP leaders, they should consider renaming the gate as RSS gate or Hindu gate,” Khan said.

BJP leader Chandramohan, the party in-charge for Rampur said, the contents of the missive were ‘highly objectionable’.

“The MP wants a gate named after Bhagat Singhji, the martyr who laid down his life for the country. In the same breath, she is also suggesting that the gate would help plying of overloaded vehicles and illegal mining. This is an insult to the great martyr and we won't take it lying down," he said.