Uproar as UP govt demolishes Gandhian Institution 'Sarva Seva Sangh' building in Varanasi

The Sarva Seva Sangh founded by Acharya Vinoba Bhave has been taken over the Railways which has been claiming ownership of the land.

Varanasi: Authorities in Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi have demolished a dozen of buildings inside the heritage Gandhian institution, the Akhil Bhartiya Sarva Seva Sangh triggering tensions in the area. Police have detained around 10 workers during their protest against the demolition. The Sarva Seva Sangh Bhawan, founded by Acharya Vinoba Bhave to propagate Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas, had been embroiled in a land dispute with the Railways with the district magistrate issuing an order in favour of the Railways thereby prompting a demotion.

The demolition work started on Saturday which triggered a protest by the workers inside the premises of the bhawan spread over 8.7 acres of land. Amid the protest by the Sarva Seva Sangh workers against the demolition, the district administration has maintaind that the Sangh does not have any concrete documents of the land.

The buildings inside the Sangh premises had already been evacuated before the demolition began on Saturday.

Uproar against demolition: Political leaders and social workers from different quarters reached the spot to try to stop the demolition work, but to no avail. The protesters said that said that the government was taking over the land forcefully. Congress leaders Priyanka Gandhi, former AAP leader Yogendra Yadav, farmer leader Rakesh Tikait and Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar also reached Varanasi in recent days to lodge a protest against the move. Medha was stopped from entering the campus, while Rakesh Tikait confined his visit to outside of Varanasi.

Ram Dheeraj, who is associated with the Sarva Seva Sangh, termed the demolitions a “conspiracy” of the government to demolish the Seva Bhawan. “We had bought this land from the Railways in three parts in 1960, 61 and 1970. We have all the documents of the money deposited in the treasury fund. The present government and the district administration are completely refusing to accept these documents.

A conspiracy was hatched to evict us from our building by preparing fake documents. This is the well-planned planning of the government,” Dheeraj said. The political row over the demolition also spilled to social media with Congress leader Jairam Ramesh targeting the ruling BJP over the “attempts to usurp and destroy Gandhi's legacy”.

“In Prime Minister's parliamentary constituency Varanasi, it is shameful to have bulldozers walking on the Sarva Seva Sangh associated with the legacy of great men like Gandhi, JP and Lal Bahadur Shastri. Attempts to usurp and destroy Gandhi's legacy have already taken place at Sabarmati Ashram in Gujarat and Gandhigram in Wardha.

Now there is a preparation to usurp the Sarva Seva Sangh of Varanasi and hand it over to the capitalists. We condemn it. BJP is now crossing all limits of shamelessness,” Jairam wrote in a tweet.

Background: The District Magistrate Varanasi had in the year 2020 issued an ordered in favopur of the Railways, which had floated a proposal to build a railway corridor through the area. The Varanasi DM gave a decision in favor of Railways while hearing about the ownership rights between Sarva Seva Sangh and Northern Railway.

Declaring the Sangh building illegal, the DM gave instructions to vacate the land. In the face of a protest by the Sarva Seva Sangh, the matter went to court. However, both the High Court and the Supreme Court rejected the pleas by the Sangh against the Railways takeover paving way for demolitions.

History: Sarva Seva Sangh was established in the year 1948 under the chairmanship of Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India. After the Sangh got the land in 1960, under the patronage of Vinoba Bhave, Jayprakash Narayan, Lal Bahadur Shastri, the foundation of the building of Sarva Seva Sangh was laid about 62 years ago. Its purpose was to convey the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi to the masses and to establish his ideals.