Mayawati in Rs 1400 crore fraud

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Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta Justice N.K. Mehrotra (Retd), has given a clean chit to BSP supremo Mayawati in the UP memorial scam while her government was in power, but said that Rs 1,400 crore was siphoned off by two former ministers, legislators, bureaucrats and technocrats in constructing memorials.
These revelations came after a year-long investigation by the lokayukta into alleged irregularities in construction of parks and memorials under the Mayawati government.
The lokayukta found 199 persons guilty of siphoning off money in the projects, and recommended action against them in a report that he submitted to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Monday.
The report says there is clear evidence of commission on the part of the 199 found guilty. He told reporters he had recommended filing of FIRs under the Prevention of Corruption Act and IPC Section 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant) against 19 persons.
Justice Mehrotra has said FIRs should be filed against former BSP ministers Naseemuddin Siddiqui and Babu Singh Kushwaha, and 30 per cent of the money siphoned off should be recovered from them. The report claimed these two were at the centre of the scam.
He also recommended action against former legislators Sharda Pratap and Anil Maurya and sitting BSP MLA Ramesh Chandra Dubey.  
Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta has found that a sum of Rs 1400 crore was embezzled through inflated billing, which amounts to almost 34 per cent of Rs 4300 crore, the total money spent in construction of memorials and parks during the BSP regime.
Those found guilty in the report prepared by Justice (retd.) N.K. Mehrotra include Chatrapal Singh, the then MD of UP Rajkiya Nirman Nigam, S.A. Farooqui, joint director mining, 5 officials of the Lucknow D e v e l o p m e n t Authority (LDA), five engineers of PWD, five officials of the mining department, 37 accountants of Rajkiya Nirman Nigam, two advocates and 60 firms that were entrusted work during the BSP regime.
Naseemuddin Siddiqui, BSP's national general secretary, who was the PWD minister in the BSP government and Babu Singh Kushwaha, the then in charge of the mining department, have also been indicted in the report.
Most of the construction work for the memorials was carried out by the UP Rajkiya Nirman Nigam and the PWD — both of which were under Siddiqui.
The Lokayukta report was handed over to Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Monday who had promised after assuming power in UP last year that firm action would be taken against those found guilty of corruption.