Mayawati’s penchant for setting up parks has, ironically, not found favour with environmentalists and naturalists. This is because her idea of a park is not about greenery and nature, but statues, concrete and mortar. Bird watchers are agitated over an Ambedkar Park coming up in Noida opposite media city. This half-a-kilometre stretch of forest land was formerly a haven for birds. Now, construction workers are erecting pillars around the boundary wall and a 20-ft-high stone elephant has scared the birds away. The Okhla bird sanctuary has shrunk to the small area around the lake.

Jaya’s new home

Apart from her mansion in Poes Garden in Chennai, Jayalalithaa has a home away from home in some other part of the country. The location of her second home keeps changing. Once she had a grape garden in Hyderabad which she visited regularly. Later she shifted to Bangalore. Last year she spent four months in her hill bungalow near Ooty.

Construction began last year on a farm house in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj, close to the airport. While the property may not be officially in Jayalalithaa’s name, it is certainly being built under her instructions with a Vaastu expert and engineers from Tamil Nadu flown down to oversee work.

The fact that Jayalalithaa is building a house in the Capital suggests that she hopes to be part of the next government in New Delhi. After all, a change of state government in Chennai is not due till 2011 so Jayalalithaa will have time on her hands.

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