CBI floods apex court with Taj case papers

Though the United Progressive Alliance has not punished Dalit leader Ramvilas Paswan, who was the spoiler in the Bihar elections, it was clear that the government was trying to save rival Dalit leader Mayawati's bacon.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has bombarded the Supreme Court with paper on the multi-crore Taj heritage corridor scam that will take weeks, if not months, for the apex court to scrutinise. One aspect of the scam is scheduled to be heard tomorrow.

The case involving former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati is in the Supreme Court, which wanted to peruse these in the light of the attorney-general's opinion for closure of case against her.

The CBI has filed voluminous probe records. A DIG of the CBI, Lucknow, filed reports /files running into 18 sealed packets in response to the apex court's 14 February order.

The material evidence, which was placed before the attorney-general for opinion in the case has also been filed by the Centre in a sealed cover along with the opinion.

The court on February 14 had sought these records even as Solicitor-General GE Vahanvati had given an undertaking on behalf of the CBI that no closure report in the case would be filed without the permission of the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the court commissioner and amicus curiae advocate Krishan Mahajan has filed an application requesting the court to direct the CBI to hand over all case material in the Taj corridor scam to the central vigilance commission for scrutiny of the agency's work in the case.

Counsel Ajay Agarwal in an application has requested the court to direct the CBI not to disturb the team, which probed the matter. He also stated that the central vigilance commission has no role in the filing of the chargesheet by the CBI as the CVC was mandated to function only as a supervisory body.

The Congress knows that if it wants to revive itself in Uttar Pradesh, it needs the support of the Bahujan Samaj Party to revive its Dalit base.

There were some indications that the BSP was softening towards the Congress when one of its MPs got up in the Lok Sabha last week to speak in defence of the UPA on the Jharkhand case but he was shouted down by the NDA.

The BSP's biggest grouse is that its Dalit rival Ramvilas Paswan is in the UPA and it would like to see him out as the condition for providing its support to the Congress-led alliance. The Congress needs the BSP badly but would like to reel it in softly without antagonising Paswan. This is a difficult task.