The Assam Government, in order to turn a ‘lesser known’ personality to an overnight hero, spent Rs 1.6 crore by procuring books on biographical account of the RSS ideologue and Bharatiya Jana Sangh co-founder Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya.
This came to light in a written reply of Assam Cultural Affairs Minister Keshab Mahanta to a query by leader of the Opposition in the Assam Legislative Assembly and Assam Congress Legislature Party leader Debabrata Saikia in the ongoing Assembly session on Wednesday.
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Mahanta told the House, the Assam Government distributed 60,000 copies of the biography of Deendayal Upadhyaya to different libraries, educational and other institutions of the State.
It may be mentioned that the Assam Government had faced huge public outcry when it decided to name 12 new model colleges after Upadhyaya last year but it was compelled to withdraw the decision.
Minister Mahanta in a written reply of the query by Congress leader Saikia said, “The Government has supplied the biography of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya in Hindi, containing 60,000 books of 15 volumes with 4,000 copies each.”
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The Minister also informed the House that the books were purchased by the Directorate of Libraries at the advice of the State Cultural Affairs Department.
The minister informed that the books were purchased from Prabhat Prakashan, a New Delhi-based publisher.
However, when asked whether the State Government has taken any proposal to purchase biographies on other personalities of the State like that of Deendayal Upadhyaya, the minister informed, the “Government no such proposal to purchase biographies of other personalities of the State”.