The Supreme Court on Tuesday declared that the CBI was free to probe the disproportionate assets case against BSP supremo Mayawati. The court issued notices to the Centre, the CBI and Ms Mayawati, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, on a plea to clarify its verdict quashing the DA case against her.
“We never said the CBI has no power to investigate. It can do so, but has to get sanction from the state government,” the court said, saying its order was not to protect anyone.
A bench of Justices P. Sathasivam and Dipak Misra sought the response of Ms Mayawati and others and made it clear it would clarify its July 6 verdict, quashing the nine-year-old DA case against Ms Mayawati, only on a review petition.
The bench agreed to this after a submission was made saying the probe had ended following its order even though the CBI had sufficient evidence against her.
“If that is the impression, then we will clarify our order,” the bench said, adding it had 'scanned' and 'surveyed' all previous orders passed by the court and had come to the conclusion that there was
no direction on the probe in this case after the FIR in the DA case was quashed.
At the same time, the bench mentioned that its order did not bar the agency from going ahead with the probe after getting appropriate sanction.
“After surveying the orders passed by the court from time to time, we felt there was no direction (on) the investigation,” the bench said.
Earlier, on July 6, the Supreme Court quashed the DA case against Ms Mayawati and had pulled up the CBI for exceeding its jurisdiction by lodging an FIR against her without any direction from it.
The court said the DA case was 'unwarranted', and the agency had proceeded against her without properly understanding its orders, confined to the Taj Corridor case (on) the release of Rs17 crores by the UP government allegedly without sanction.