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Thwarting a cover-up

Under the orders of the Supreme Court, which has rejected the attempt of the Central Bureau of Investigation to close the case against the Bahujan Samaj Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, a special court will examine whether there is a case of corruption as well behind the monumental folly of the Taj Heritage Corridor project conceived by her government. The name was no more than a camouflage for a Rs.175 crore commercial project involving shopping malls, entertainment centres, and parks along a two-kilometre stretch of the Yamuna close to the Taj. Quite apart from the aesthetic assault, it involved reclaiming some part of the riverbed and building an embankment that could have posed a threat to the structure of the Taj and the Agra Fort. Mercifully, the project was halted because of the intervention of the then Union Minister for Culture, Jagmohan, but not before the Centrally owned National Projects Construction Corporation had spent Rs.40 crore on reclamation and building a wall along the river. In its enquiry whether something more was involved than just the mindless pursuit of a construction project so close to the protected monuments, the CBI collected some material which the Attorney General felt did not warrant prosecution but which the Central Vigilance Commission assessed as strong enough to file a charge sheet.

Both the National Democratic Alliance government and the present United Progressive Alliance government have shown an eagerness to save a strong potential ally from the embarrassment of a criminal prosecution. The CBI too despite its court-granted independence went along, by making an unwarranted reference to the Attorney General and resorting to "a charade of performance of duty," as the court put it. The Supreme Court's latest order is an indictment of the CBI for failing in its duty to come to an independent decision on the strength of the evidence and prosecution, but it also reiterates the principle that the politically powerful cannot escape prosecution through the grace of the executive acting on partisan lines. Its order asking the special court to decide if the material warranted the filing of a charge sheet against Ms. Mayawati disregarding the opinion of both the Attorney General and the CVC is a blow for the larger principle of equality before the law. It needs to be noted that the case is at a very preliminary stage and what the CBI has is evidence on the weight of which opinion is divided. The presumption of innocence always holds. Politically, while Ms. Maywati may come under a cloud if the court decides to go ahead with the charge sheet, given the time such cases take to come to a conclusion, the case does not seem at the moment to emerge as a roadblock to her quest for power in the Uttar Pradesh elections next year.

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