UP chief minister and BSP chief Mayawati on Wednesday accused the Centre and CBI of harbouring a caste bias against her and sought parity in treatment with RJD head Lalu Prasad and SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav in matters relating to disproportionate asset cases.
Responding to the CBI’s fresh stand before the court that the agency had unimpeachable evidence to nail her in the DA case, the UP CM said: “The entire investigation by the CBI in the matter is aimed at character assassination.”
She said the CBI has been maintaining since 2008, when she had filed the petition seeking SC intervention to stop the agency from harassing her, that it had completed investigation and that the final report was ready for filing before the trial court in the case.
Her affidavit, filed by additional advocate general Shail Kumar Dwivedi, said the I-T department has given a clean chit to her in the allegations relating disproportionate assets related to the assessment years 2001-2002 and 2002-03.
“After all the re-assessment done by tax authorities, the entire gifts amounting to a total of Rs 2.78 crore received between the assessment year 1999-2000 to 2004-05 have been duly accepted as genuine gifts. I-T was these very gifts which were initially thought by CBI to be non-genuine gifts and unlawful receipts and were used by the agency to make a DA case against her,” it said.
Citing a Supreme Court judgment of the year 2007 that had ruled that finding of facts recorded by the I-T Appellate Tribunal was binding on the apex court, Mayawati wondered as to how the the CBI was proceeding with the case even after the I-T authorities did not find any irregularity in her income.
She said the UPA government had taken pains to point out similar rulings and legal opinions from its top law officers on the DA allegations against Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav for closure of the cases against them, but was hell-bent on proceeding against her because she belonged to the scheduled caste community and that she was the CM of Uttar Pradesh.
“The conclusions of the CBI in the matter of investigation into DA case as contained in the alleged final report lying ready since filing of the writ petition in the year May 2008 is based on pre-concieved notions, conjectures and surmises, unrelated to factual scenario apparently only because she is a member of the scheduled caste community and holding constitutional office of the chief minister,” the affidavit said.
Seeking parity in treatment with Prasad and Yadav, Mayawati said: “The CBI cannot discriminate between two individuals on the basis of its whims.”
In the case of Mulayam Singh Yadav, the legal opinion from the then Solicitor General to the CBI was that the income of family members could not be clubbed with that of the SP chief.
Terming her case to be on a stronger wicket, Mayawati said the CBI had chosen to club the income of her relatives with that of her despite knowing fully well that “I am living alone being an unmarried lady having my own income and having no connection with my family members, who live separately and file their own income tax returns.”
Very good strategy. But does the constitutional liberty given for decades to the people from the so-called “scheduled and backward/most backward/converted-scheduled-and- backward castes] extend to the freedom of looting also, e.g., in respect of fodder/bitumen, 3-G spectrum, shipping contracts, etc. also? The Supreme Court/Govt. may kindly enlighten the people of this country.