JOIN USThe law has finally caught up with disgraced former Uttar Pradesh chief secretary Neera Yadav. A special CBI court, which found her guilty in a 2002 case of illegal allocation of commercial plots in Noida, has sentenced her to four years in jail. As head of the New Okhla Industrial Development Authority in Noida, Yadav had in 1995 brazenly violated regulations to farm out commercial land among her kith and kin, officials, politicians and businessmen. Among those who benefited from Yadav’s illegal dealings was Flex Industries to whom Yadav allotted plots of land at rock-bottom prices. This, of course, was not the only case in which she had engaged in dubious dealings. In fact, so brazen was her corruption and nepotism in various posts over the years that she was voted by her peers in the UP IAS Officers’ Association as among the most corrupt officials in the state in 1997. Yadav’s powerful political connections in parties across the board helped her climb to the very top of the civil service hierarchy despite her corrupt record. In 2005, chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav appointed her chief secretary although she had a CBI chargesheet against her in four graft cases and was facing 23 departmental proceedings at that time. But she was forced to step down from the post a few months later on the orders of the supreme court.
It has taken over a decade to bring Yadav to justice. Although the CBI filed its chargesheet against her in 2002, she is reported to have tried every trick in the book to delay the trial. The determined efforts of a handful of CBI officers and the CBI court ultimately defeated her by ensuring that the justice system delivered.
Scores of corruption cases have erupted in the open in recent months, in many states including Karnataka, wherein politicians, officials and businessmen were found to be violating rules brazenly to distribute land and other resources among their kith and kin. These have left the common man in a state of despair. Is it possible at all to cleanse our system of graft when it is influential politicians and officials who are engaging in corruption? Neera Yadav’s fate indicates that it is possible to bring to justice even the most powerful people in the country. But judicial system needs to speed up the process.