Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWorkers cover elephant statues at the Ambedkar Park in Noida, Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday.The onerous task of hiding Uttar Pradesh’s enormous stone tributes to the state’s chief minister, Mayawati, and her party began early Tuesday morning.
In the eastern Delhi suburb of Noida, dozens of workers were using ladders, measuring tape and strings to judge the length and breadth of two dozen massive elephant statues and one large-sized stone Mayawati. They started by using pink plastic sheets to drape the elephants, then a worker climbed on a wooden ladder to the mouth of elephant and wrapped the curled trunk first. After half an hour the first sandstone elephant statue was covered.
Ms. Mayawati constructed huge public parks in Noida and the state capital of Lucknow during her five-year tenure as the chief minister of India’s most populous state. These parks are strewn with statues of herself and other historical figures, and her Bahujan Samaj Party’s symbol, the elephant.
Ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections, which start next month, these statues need to be covered, the Election Commission said Sunday. The statues’ visibility might sway voters, and create an unlevel playing field, the commission said. The Uttar Pradesh government has until Wednesday at 5 p.m. to finish the task.
Ms. Mayawati belongs to India’s lower caste and she enjoys strong electoral support from other lower caste members, who make up about one-fifth of Uttar Pradesh’s nearly 200 million people.
On Monday, the authorities were tasked with deciding how exactly to cover the statues. They traipsed in and out of Noida’s parks, exploring different options of cloth and plastic sheets. State government security forces, created especially by Ms. Mayawati to protect parks and monuments, were stationed at entry gates to prevent any unauthorized entry.
The Noida Park is spread over in 33 hectares, or 82 acres, of prime real estate along the Yamuna River. It was constructed at the cost of $130 million, and has 24 huge statues of elephants, and one of Ms. Mayawati. There are many more small statues of elephants in the park – all of which need to be covered.
The park was created after cutting 6,186 fully grown trees, and was involved in legal hurdles for years. The Supreme Court of India finally cleared it in December 2010, after instructing that three-fourths of the park should remain a “green area,” rather than concreted or covered in sandstone, and demanding more trees be planted in the park.
Opinions on the statue-covering issue are sharply divided along caste lines.
Bhawani Singh, 28, a stone worker at the park, sipping tea near the boundary wall said, “It is not proper to cover the statues. This is not the personal property of Mayawati, it is for public good.”
Mr. Singh, who himself belongs to the lower caste, raised the question how the election commission will deal with bicycles, the election symbol of the main opposition party in Uttar Pradesh, or lotus flowers, the election symbol of the Bharatiya Janata Party, or open palms, the election symbol of the Congress Party.
Ms. Mayawati has done a lot of developmental work in Uttar Pradesh, adding roads, schools and hospitals, said Mr. Singh.
Another worker, Rajbir Barathia, 26, a lower-caste man from Rajasthan, said, “This is a temple of Mayawati and it is a very nice park. Mayawati has done a lot for development.”
Ram Shankar Diwedi, an upper-caste Brahmin and retired teacher, who visited the park with his son to watch the wrapping Tuesday, said, “Millions are spent on this, but people can’t enter in this park. This money could have been spent on some public good like roads, school, hospitals.”