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A satirical play, depicting the extravagant lifestyle of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, has been banned by her government.
Even as its director Mukesh Kumar denied any connection between his play and the UP chief minister, Lucknow district magistrate declared, "The play, titled 'My Sandal', was in utter violation of the election model code of conduct and therefore its staging could not be permitted."
However, looking at the story line of the play, it became more than obvious that the depiction was that of none other than Mayawati. Even the names of characters including the central character were extremely close to belonging to Mayawati's coterie.
The story was about 'Maya' a queen who rules over a country called 'Mayanagri'. She is obsessed about high quality sandals, which are procured from far off Arab world .
Her sycophants find it convenient to particularly offer sandals as gift to her. One such precious pair is bought by her devoted nobles as gift for her next birthday. However, since the birthday is still away, the nobles named Satish, Naseem and Nakul choose to keep the priceless gift in the safe and secure confines of the queen's treasury.
Then, the sandals are accidently gobbled up by her favourite elephant, who necessarily feeds on jewels stacked in the treasury to which the animal has free access.
The deeply worried nobles seek the good offices of the kingdom's exiled doctor, who was widely known for doing the impossible. They implore upon him to give the elephant some drug so that the sandals come out of the intestines together with the jewels on which it had been feeding .
The doctor's medicines do the magic and the sandals slip out along with the excreta. But the jewels are all missing. Instead what comes out are documents exposing the corrupt practices the queen has been indulging in to amass all her ill-gotten wealth, which provokes a revolt in the kingdom.
Even as the district magistrate termed "violation of election code of conduct" as the key reason for the ban, his own additional district magistrate went on record to say on a TV channel, "The play was disallowed because assembly of more than four persons is banned in view of imposition of section 144 of CrPC."
Whatever be the official stand, there could be no denying that the story matches dramatically with the UP chief minister's outlandish lifestyle.