Lucknow: Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Monday, amid the controversy over alleged ravaging of Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi, said, “Heritage is meant to be preserved, not destroyed.”
Yadav wrote on X, “Like pearls, heritage is strung together; it is not broken, it is preserved.”
The post was accompanied by before-and-after pictures purportedly showing a damaged statue, with a caption: “Statue of Ahilyabai was found buried under debris.”
On Sunday, Yadav shared a post mentioning FIRs against eight people in connection with the Manikarnika Ghat issue and asked the government, “From which AI lab did the government get the investigation done? Provide its certificate.”
The controversy relates to the circulation of images, allegedly AI-generated, on social media of Manikarnika Ghat.
Eight FIRs were filed at Varanasi’s Chowk Police Station, with cases against Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Sanjay Singh, Congress leader Pappu Yadav, Jaswinder Kaur and others in this connection, an officer said.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Gaurav Bansal said cases have been registered under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) against eight individuals and certain X handles for allegedly spreading fabricated content related to the ongoing beautification and strengthening of cremation facilities at the ghat.
After an FIR was registered on Saturday, Sanjay Singh told reporters that Manikarnika Ghat in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency had been “ravaged”, temples demolished, and the statue of Ahilyabai Holkar, credited with the renovation of the Kashi Vishwanath temple, damaged.
Singh said that the action (at ghat) was opposed by saints of Kashi, members of the Holkar family and even former Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan, but an FIR was lodged only against him.
