Unnao gold rush: Has it caught the UP govt on the back foot?

Has the Akhilesh Yadav government caught itself on the wrong foot by facilitating the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to dig at Unnao, reportedly based on the dream of a sadhu?

No, said Madhukar Jetley, adviser to the Samajwadi Party government. In a panel discussion on CNN-IBN, he said, “Nobody from the government actively went to talk about this. There was a village panchayat which passed a resolution to see if this possibility of a treasure buried exists.”

According to him, the state government had no role to play as the monument was protected under the 1958 Act protecting historical monuments. “The matter was between mining ministry and culture ministry. The state government hasn’t asked for this excavation, neither is it doing it,” he said.

He also said that Charan Das Mahant, Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Processing Industry, had visited the site after which he had ordered ASI and Geological Survey of India (GSI) to look into the matter.

However, historian Mridula Mukherjee said that there were serious flaws in the way this excavation was being done. “There are very serious institutional issues. How can ASI run on the level of a minister?” she asked.

She said, “Public money is being spent on wild goose chase. I object to the money, the taxes being misused. But more than that I object to what we are promoting - obscurantism and blind faith. What is the idea of India we are building?”