How corruption cases against Mayawati and Mulayam vanished

A snapshot of the CBI's flip flops in the Mulayam-Mayawati cases and how they coincided with political gains for the Congress

A month after the CBI closed the disproportionate assets case against Mulayam Singh Yadav, his arch rival Mayawati is likely to be given a clean chit by the federal investigating agency in a similar case. While speculation is rife that this closure is the Congress’s precursor to stitching up an alliance with the BSP, a snapshot of both these cases reveals that not just today, but at every step in the past too, the nature and timing of CBI’s actions, have coincided to suit political requirements of the ruling regime. 

 

Are these happy coincidences, or is there more than what meets the eye? 

 

While the BJP alleges that the CBI is being misused by the Congress, particularly in the case relating to Bahujan Samaj Party Supremo Mayawati, the opposition itself has been accused of using the investigative agency to settle political scores. In 2003 the CBI filed a case against Mayawati in the Taj Corridor scam barely a month after she severed ties with the NDA government. Mayawati alleged that the BJP deliberately whipped up the case, because she didn’t concede to its demand for more seats in the Lok Sabha elections. 

 

To be fair to the BJP, it filed the FIR only after a Supreme Court directive. The real maneuvering and flip flops happened under the UPA regime. 

 

Sometime between 2003 and 2007, when the regime changed and BSP extended outside support to the UPA, the investigating agency filed a closure report in the Taj Corridor case, only for it to be dismissed by the CVC, under whom the CBI functions. The CVC report dramatically claimed that there was enough evidence to prosecute Mayawati, quite in contradiction to what the CBI director had said. But by May 2007, Mayawati had ascended to the throne as UP Chief Minister with a thumping mandate. And a month later, despite being ready to prosecute her, the CBI was refused that permission by UP Governor TV Rajeswar, a man reported in the media to be close to UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. 

 

Ironically, barely a month after Mayawati pulled out of her alliance with the UPA government in 2008, the CBI registered an FIR against Mayawati in another disproportionate assets case, an offshoot of the Taj Corridor case. It is this action by the CBI, (which Mayawati called political vendetta) that the Supreme Court questioned in 2012; saying the agency had exceeded its mandate by investigating a case without permission from either the court or the state government. 

 

Why the court didn’t ask the CBI to file a charge-sheet on the basis of the evidence it had gathered against Mayawati is something that eminent lawyers like Prashant Bhushan have questioned. But leave that aside for the moment.  Let’s talk about Mulayam. 

 

Around the same time – in 2007, the Samajwadi Party chief was in a spot of bother. The Supreme Court had ordered the CBI to conduct investigations into alleged disproportionate assets amassed by him and his family. The CBI filed a status report the same year, implicating the Yadavs of amassing wealth disproportionate to their sources of income.

 

In July 2008, Mulayam pledged support to the UPA on the trust vote, helping the government sail through the crisis. 

 

In December 2008, the CBI, on the advice of the Solicitor General sought to withdraw the case. Why? Because Dimple Yadav (Akhilesh’s wife) directly petitioned the prime minister, barely eight days before the trust vote on the nuclear deal, asking that her assets not be clubbed with the rest of the Yadavs. 

 

Ever since, the SP has bailed out the government on more than one occasion. It stood by the UPA after Trinamool pulled out over Pranab Mukherjee’s candidature as President, and more recently did a predictable u-turn on the food security bill after vociferously opposing it for months. 

 

Within days of the food bill being passed, the CBI also magically dropped the DA case against the Yadavs, saying that without Dimple (The SC ordered Dimple’s exclusion from the case on the grounds that she was a private person), their case was finished. 

 

Was it really? Questions remain. 

 

Why did the CBI close the file despite Dimple’s assets constituting ‘less than 30% of the total overrun of the family’ as Sreenivasan Jain points out in his Business Standard column dated August 6 2013? 

 

We still don’t have an answer. 

 

As for Mayawati - why did the CBI choose not to appeal to the Supreme Court order of July 2012 despite claims that it had incriminating evidence against her, and an intervention petition seeking a review was already filed by an outside party?

 

Also what about the fact that the court has still not taken away the CBI’s power to proceed against Mayawati, if it wants to, in another disproportionate assets case? 

 

Whether the government will exercise this option amid hectic pre-election parlays and alleged alliance talks is anybody’s guess.