The nine-year-old disproportionate assets case against Ms Mayawati, which she often alleged was used both by the NDA and the UPA to arm-twist her government at different stages in UP, was the result of the Taj corridor scam which came to light in July 2003.
The matter was brought before the top court by advocate Ajay Agrawal, who was then considered close to the BJP, in a PIL highlighting how a vast chunk of land from the Yamuna river-bed was being reclaimed to create a shopping corridor behind the Taj Mahal.
Since a special bench, then headed by Justice M.B. Shah (now retired) was monitoring industries’ pollution around the Taj, Mr Agrawal’s PIL was referred to the bench, which passed a series of orders, including that for registration of the FIR, and also find out if the `17 crores released by the UP government for the project had resulted in amassing of disproportionate assets by the politician-bureaucrat nexus. Apart from Ms Mayawati, others whom the SC wanted probed included then Union environment secretary R.K. Sharma, former UP chief secretary D.S. Bagga, Mr Mayawati’s then principle secretary P.L. Punia (now a Congress MP) and former UP environment secretaries R.K. Sharma and V.K. Gupta.
Project company NPCC’s managing director S.C. Bali also had come under the CBI scanner after the top court order.
Though CBI had filed a chargesheet against Ms Mayawati and others in the special court in Lucknow, the prosecution could not be launched as then governor T.V. Rajeswar declined the mandatory sanction. A petition challenging the governor’s order is still pending before the Allahabad high court.
Since the CBI was asked to probe the assets of the accused persons, the agency had registered a separate FIR against Ms Mayawati alleging that the value of her assets had shot up considerably during the intervening period of the Taj corridor scam, hence the same needed to be properly investigated.
Ms Mayawati, however, had claimed that the assets she acquired during the period was out of the money donated to her by her supporters. In a parallel probe, the income-tax department also assessed her assets disproportionate to her known sources of income but the Income-Tax Appellate Tribunal had accepted her plea.