Asserting that it is committed to making Pune’s Bhidewada – where the legendary Savitribai Phule founded India’s first girls school 175 years ago – into a national memorial, the Maharashtra government told the legislature on Tuesday that all steps will be taken to resolve the pending legal issues and tenants’ dues.
Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said that the government is prepared to spend any amount for acquiring this historic location – where girls’ education was kickstarted in a small way on January 1, 1848 by Savitribai Phule.
Replying to a question by Nationalist Congress Party MLAs Chhagan Bhujbal and Chetan V. Tupe, asking the government to clear the position on Bhidewada and the tenants, he said that he has issued the instructions to the Urban Development Department to immediately settle the dues of the tenants, which are around Rs 10 crore.
“Since the matter is pending in court, after the dues are cleared, at the next hearing on March 10, the case can be settled and the possession can come to the state government,” Shinde said.
To Tupe’s concern on the issue of heritage status for the Bhidewada building which is over 150 years old, Industry Minister Uday Samant replied that it cannot be included in the heritage list, so the government would pay up the tenants, take possession and carry out all other works related to the national memorial on it later.
The demand to make Bhidewada a national monument has been raised for several decades by various politicians, parties and even social organisations, but the matter was stuck in a legal tangle between the tenants and the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC).
With the state government agreeing to clear the tenants’ outstandings as per the market value, the crux of the controversy would be resolved, paving the way for a national memorial there.
The iconic Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and his wife Savitribai, launched India’s first girls’ school in 1848 at Bhidewada, Pune, creating history.
While Savitribai became the country’s first woman teacher at that school, the success of that modest but epochal initiative enabled two more girls schools coming up in Pune, with the help of her friend, Fatima Begum Sheikh, a literate woman who also taught there to become India’s first woman Muslim teacher in 1849.
Since the past few years, there have been demands from various quarters to confer the Bharat Ratna on the Phule couple, and the state government had sent a proposal to the Centre on this in 2018.