According to the news agency Online newsA 300-meter house near Baharestan Square had become a serious obstacle to the completion of the new National Assembly building in November 1338. While the government had bought and demolished dozens of houses around it to develop the Majlis complex, the owner of one of the last remaining houses was not willing to sell his property at the expert price. The story got so high that on Wednesday, November 19, 1338, the newspaper Keihan turned it into its first headline: “The wife of Mr. Shuja Marandi prevents the continuation of the building of the National Assembly!”
The house in question belonged to Mr. Shuja Marandi, a truck driver, who, due to his constant business trips, had hired his wife Betul Khanum as a lawyer to negotiate with the parliament officials and sell the property. Among the 54 houses that were on the way to the development of the Majlis building, most of the properties were purchased with the agreement of their owners, and two of the remaining three properties were on the verge of agreement. But Mrs. Betul was not willing to give up on her wish.
In an interview that Kayhan published with her, Betoul Khanum did not accept the price offered by the parliament, which is 100 thousand tomans, and demanded 300 thousand tomans for the sale of her three-story, 300-meter house. He openly said that he bought the house cheaply, but now he plans to sell it for many times the price. His reasoning was that with this money he should buy a suitable house for his six children and he is not willing to change his place of residence for a lower urban area.
Read the full text of Keihan’s interview with Mrs. Betul here read
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