Kadapa MP YS Jagan Mohan Reddy said the court was being used as a tool to achieve political gains.
He also demanded that state government make its stand clear on this matter. “The government has to take a stand on whether they are supporting me or hounding me in this case. They can’t hide behind the court to gain credibility to their baseless allegations,” Jagan’s counsel argued before a division bench of AP High Court.
The bench headed by Chief Justice Nisar Ahmed Kakru on Tuesday heard the arguments of the respondents, including Jagan, who filed his counter yesterday in the suo motto writ petition admitted by the court which had also ordered a preliminary inquiry by the CBI. A state minister in a letter to the court had levelled these allegations, along with a TDP MP and a high court lawyer from Kadapa.
Supreme Court senior lawyer KTS Tulsi, who appeared before the bench on behalf of Jagan, said the petitioner, a sitting Congress MLA, wrote his first letter to the Chief Justice on November 27, 2010, as they wanted to compel his client not to resign from the party even as Jagan quit only two days later. “The sitting MLA was rewarded with a cabinet berth just a week after writing the letter,” he said, stating such petitions were nothing but new tools and technology to take on political adversaries and reap political gains.
He rejected the allegations that Jagan had amassed wealth after his father YS Rajasekhara Reddy became chief minister. “If it is true that my networth rose from a mere Rs 11 lakh prior to 2004 to Rs 43,000 crore afterwards then I must undoubtedly be sent to jail for the rest of my life,” Tulsi said charging that the petitioner had misled the court while suppressing the facts. Jagan’s investments in 2003-04 stood at Rs 19.43 crore and his networth rose to Rs 407 crore in March 2011 after the divestment of his equity in Bharati Cements, promoted by him.
Tulsi argued that the investors paid a premium to buy shares in Jagan’s companies including Bharati Cements and Jagati publications following the success of these ventures. On investments made by Nimmagadda Prasad, ex promoter of Matrix Laboratories, into Jagan’s companies allegedly in return to the port-cum-industrial corridor project, which his company was awarded, the lawyer said the project was only awarded to the kingdom of Ras Al Khaima, which in turn roped him in as a local partner.
Neither the government scrapped the project nor it changed any policies under which such projects were awarded. The counsel requested the court not to open the CBI report, or it be given a copy of it if it’s opened.
All the companies, which are made respondents in the case told the court they had made investments purely on business considerations. The court posted the case for next hearing tomorrow.
