(From top) The demolished structure at Sahara Sahar, Mayavati and Subroto Roy. (Picture by Naeem Ansari)

Lucknow, June 19: The tenuous ties between the Mayavati regime and the Sahara India Pariwar have snapped with the government striking at midnight to demolish a boundary wall of the business, which, however, won a judicial reprieve later in the day.

The wall was coming in between the Ambedkar Memorial Park — the chief minister’s pet project to showcase Dalit pride — and Sahara Sahar, the dream city of the business empire’s chief, Subroto Roy, said to be close to Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayavati’s arch-rival.

The government’s official explanation for the demolition is it would pave the way for a 30-metre-wide road that will act as a buffer between the park and Sahara Sahar, built in the nineties.

The Sahara township, spread over 270 acres, borders the park on its southern fringe near Gomtinagar.

The Sahara group, which described the move as “vindictive”, swiftly moved Allahabad High Court, which pulled up the government and ordered “restoration”.

A division bench of Justice D.P. Singh and Justice Balkrishna Narayan, while staying the demolition drive, told the chief secretary to “restore” possession of land to Sahara and file a compliance report within 24 hours.

The judges observed that there was no need for the Lucknow Development Authority to have undertaken such a massive demolition drive so late in the night.

The court directed the government to pull down illegal constructions only between 9am and 5pm and told it to bring in a law to enforce this.

“In Europe and elsewhere it is the general practice that demolition work is carried out only during office hours. The state government should pass a law to ensure that no demolition work is done after sunset or before sunrise,” the bench said.

The ruling came as a major embarrassment for the government, which promised to move the Supreme Court.

A senior advocate close to the chief minister said the apex court would be approached to vacate the stay “because the Sahara group was actually encroaching on the area identified as a green belt by the Supreme Court”.

The encroachment drive that began at midnight on Wednesday continued till this morning when bulldozers razed all constructions within 500 metres of the boundary wall on the northern side of the township.

The bulldozers demolished at least 10 residential constructions, a bridge that led to Jal Mahal, a private auditorium of the Sahara group, and the boundary wall.

Lucknow Development Authority vice-chairman Ram Bahadur justified the action, saying the constructions had encroached on the zonal road already in the master plan.

“It was part of the green belt. How is the government at fault if it tries to stop encroachment along the green belt?” he said.

Abhijit Sarkar, head, corporate communications, Sahara India Pariwar, issued a prompt rejoinder to the government claim.

“The officers of LDA, who are under the political diktat of their bosses, … have with extreme high-handedness demolished portions of a few structures of the 15-year-old Sahara Sahar just to connect their dream project of Ambedkar Park with Gomti Barrage.”

The government’s relationship with the Sahara group has been uneasy, more so because of Roy’s perceived proximity to Mulayam and Amar Singh.

Sources said the Bahujan Samaj Party regime had been going slow on all Sahara projects, including its ambitious high-tech city, cleared during Mulayam’s rule.

Last year, the government served a notice on the business house for “illegal construction” inside the township, saying it had no clearance for multi-storeyed buildings.

The sources said the government was also planning to review the process of land allotment to the Sahara group made during Mulayam’s tenure as chief minister.

The Sahara Sahar land, worth about Rs 1,000 crore, has always been mired in controversy.

In 1999, the then Kalyan Singh government had issued notices to get the land vacated but nothing came of it.

In 2003, the Mulayam government withdrew the Kalyan government’s order through a cabinet proposal.