NEW DELHI: Boats imported from China at Rs 16 lakh a piece, grass costing Rs 38 lakh and a national flag worth Rs 1.38 crore — these are among the items that have come under the scanner of the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh , one of whose ministers has termed two showcase projects of the previous regime a “massive scam”.Both Rs 416-crore Janeshwar Mishra Park and the Rs 864-crore Jai Prakash Narayan International Convention Centre in Lucknow could have been built at a fourth of their combined cost, UP’s minister of state for housing and urban planning Suresh Passi told ET, after having inspected the two projects earlier this week.“Officials (in the Akhilesh Yadav government ) earned hefty commissions by getting equipment from abroad. I will submit a report to chief minister Yogi Adityanath. An inquiry will be done,” said Passi, who reports to Adityanath, who has kept the housing and urban planning portfolio with himself. This comes days after the new government announced a judicial probe into the erstwhile Samajwadi Party government’s Rs 1,513 crore Gomti riverfront beautification project.Akhilesh Yadav had during the election campaign targeted his predecessor, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati , for lavish expenditure during her tenure on stone statues of elephants, her mentor and herself in Lucknow and Noida. With the change in guard in the state, the boot is now on the other foot.Passi said it was ironical that such “extravagant expenditure” took place in the name of leaders including the socialist icon Jai Prakash Narayan. “A museum worth Rs 50 crore was inaugurated by Akhilesh Yadav in the convention centre. It does not get even 50 visitors. A poor person cannot even dream of entering this extravagant building… Jai Prakash Narayan was a simple person who was always among the poor. This convention centre reeks of luxury much against JP’s ideals,” he said.The minister specifically questioned the need for building a helipad on the roof of the 17-floor convention centre and spending lakhs of rupees on it when it could have been built at a fraction of the cost on the ground. “Officials said the helipad was built to rescue people in case of a fire. It is a stupid idea… seems some senior SP leader saw a dream and it was executed. For whose landing has the helipad been built?” he said.Passi further said that although officials claimed 86% of the project is complete, he suspects half of the work is still pending.Samajwadi Party spokesman Sunil Singh Yadav, a close aide of the former CM, told ET that the party is open to a probe into any of its projects. “We are not afraid of probe. But BJP should not play politics over any inquiry. The fact is that Akhilesh Yadav has done so much work that the new government will spend two years cutting ribbons of his projects. The real question is: Can the BJP do any work better than that done by Akhilesh government?” he said. Passi, however, cited specific instances while claiming that the previous government indulged in utter waste of public money.“Can installing the flag cost more than Rs 5 lakh? The cost of the boat in India would not be more than Rs 50,000. Three LED boards were installed at the cost of Rs 88 lakh? What was the need? Rs 1.25 crore has been shown as the cost of the statue of Janeshwar ji while the cost of each street light pole is shown at Rs 9 lakh — all this is way above normal costs,” the minister said, referring to the 300-acre park built in the memory of the late SP leader.That’s not all. Passi said the Akhilesh Yadav government spent Rs 1.44 crore on installing 12 bores to get water for the park at a time when the water level of the Gomti river had fallen by 16 metres. “The park runs an electricity bill of Rs 20 lakh a month. Crores have been spent on a music system and fountains too,” he said.Questions are also being raised in the new government over the cost of the international cricket stadium in Lucknow initiated by the previous government. Earlier, while inspecting the Gomti riverfront project, Adityananth had on April 1 questioned the utility of installing fountains worth Rs 50 crore in the Gomti river, which itself was unclean. The cost of the project had escalated from Rs 1,513 crore to Rs 2,448 crore, prompting the new CM to order an inquiry into it.