SC to hear plea seeking graft case against Maya

New Delhi, April14
The Supreme Court today decided to hold detailed hearings on a plea for booking BSP chief Mayawati for alleged corruption despite objections by her and the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Mayawati’s senior counsel KK Venugopal contended that the petitioner, Kamlesh Verma, was a former BSP functionary who quit the party following denial of ticket to contest elections. He then joined the Congress and lost Assembly and Lok Sabha polls. The petition was nothing but political vendetta and as such liable to be dismissed.
Appearing for the CBI, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said Mayawati had already been given a clean chit by the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal and the Delhi High Court in the wake of allegations of disproportionate assets.
Petitioner’s counsel Kamini Jaiswal said the clean chit pertained to her income in 2003-04, while the plea for a CBI case on charges of corruption related to her amassing of wealth during 1995-2003.
At this, a Bench comprising Justices Anil Dave and AK Goel said it wanted to assess the merits of the allegations and as such would go into the issue in detail. It granted leave, a legal jargon, for the purpose.
The SC had issued notice to her and the CBI ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in April-May 2014, seeking their response to the PIL. In its response, the CBI said no case was made out against her.
Appearing for the petitioner, senior counsel Shanti Bhushan had pleaded that the SC had only quashed the FIR against Mayawati relating to an alleged scam in the Taj Heritage Corridor case, but the CBI had stopped pursuing even the disproportionate assets (DA) case which had nothing to do with the scam.
Quashing CBI’s FIR against Mayawati and senior state officials on a technical ground on July 6, 2012, the SC had clarified that it had not gone into the DA case relating to the period from 1995 to 2003. It had rejected on August 8, 2013 Verma’s petition seeking a review of the 2012 verdict.