Lucknow, Sep 17 - Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati Thursday denied her government had defied the Supreme Court order on halting all construction activity in the state.

Addressing a rally during a foundation stone laying ceremony for a 70-acre eco garden named after the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) founder Kanshi Ram here in the evening, the chief minister trained her guns on the opposition and the media for what she termed as 'distortion and twisting of facts'.

She said: 'We never violated the Supreme Court's order to stop work at various memorial construction sites; it was the opposition parties and a section of the media that painted a false picture.

'We have clarified our position in an affidavit submitted before the apex court today,' she added.

The Supreme Court had last week given a six-hour ultimatum to the state government for bringing construction activity at different memorial sites in Lucknow to a halt.

While complying with the apex court's ultimatum, Mayawati however continued with the demolition. She got the Lucknow district jail building pulled down, debris removed and ground levelled to pave way for laying a grand Kanshi Ram Eco Garden - all in less than 72 hours.

Mayawati claimed that she had conceived the eco park concept a long time ago.

'Since the local jail had to be moved to a new and modern building as the old building was not only crumbling but was also over-crowded, the huge chunk of jail land came in handy for the eco park, for which we had been hunting for an appropriate locale for quite sometime,' she said.

Coincidentally the eco park would adjoin the Rs.725 crore Kanshi Ram Memorial built on a 25-acre plot of land, which was earlier carved out of the jail compound.

She said the proposed eco garden to be 'world class' and 'people will come down to see the garden not only from different corners of India but also from foreign lands'.