JOIN USThe quashing of an FIR against former UP chief minister Mayawati by a Supreme Court bench in a disproportionate assets case against her might bring relief to her but raises uncomfortable questions about how charges of corruption are being handled. The court shot down the FIR because it felt that the CBI had exceeded its brief by conducting a ‘roving enquiry’ into the huge increase in the wealth acquired by Mayawati and her relatives since 1995, though the court had directed the agency only to investigate the alleged irregularities in the Taj Corridor project of 2003. Admittedly there may be an issue of fundamental rights involved in subjecting a person to official scrutiny without legal sanction but this principle is usually and unfortunately invoked in wrong and the most undeserving of cases.
There is proof, amply available from Mayawati’s own affidavits filed with election authorities and the income tax department, of her assets increasing from Rs 1 crore by many multiples to over a hundred crores in a few years. This includes real estate acquisitions also in her own name and the names of others. In all probability the declared assets do not give a full picture of her actual wealth. It is inconceivable that all this could have been acquired legitimately, and the argument that they were all contributions made by her supporters is not at all convincing. But now that the FIR, prepared after years of investigation, has been quashed on a technical ground, there is as of now, no way of making Mayawati account for her wealth. This is yet another case of a politician, who can employ the best legal resources, taking advantage of the best principles of law as a safeguard against the operation of the law itself.
As the court noted, the CBI may have misunderstood its directive. It also could have been working on orders from political masters to harass Mayawati. The present government is known to use it for its own political ends. But if investigation of corruption is only a matter of political convenience, as Mayawati’s and many other cases like Jaganmohan Reddy’s in Andhra Pradesh show, how would the system retain even the least credibility? Surely, beyond the legal quibbles and politics there should be a way to protect public interest and ensure that suspicions of corruption do no just stay as suspicions.