CBI in the dock
by
AJ Philip |
Why single out Mayawati who just symbolises a malaise?
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) suffered a body blow on July 6 when the Supreme Court junked its disproportionate assets case against former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati. A cursory reading of the verdict, delivered by a two-member Bench, suggests it had no justification to launch such a case. For the CBI, the most charitable interpretation is that it had misinterpreted a September 18, 2003, court order to target her.
What is, perhaps, more truthful is that the government had pressured the CBI to use the court order as a ruse to register a fusillade of cases against her. To put it differently, the premier investigating agency served as a handmaiden of the government. The 2003 order dealt with a corruption case that arose over the controversial Taj corridor project in which officials and politicians had made money worth millions.
It is a sad reflection of the criminal justice system that the Supreme Court took nine long years to find that the CBI had been “misinterpreting” its order to investigate the assets she had acquired since she first became chief minister in 1995. That is even when the CBI had been periodically filing status reports on the case to the court. The court, therefore, cannot but apportion blame for the “harassment” Mayawati has been facing.
Mayawati and her Bahujan Samaj Party have gone to town claiming that Friday’s verdict had vindicated her stand that she had not amassed any property disproportionate to her known sources of income. To be fair to her, she has “accounted” for every rupee in her kitty and her close relations have paid an extra $14 million as income tax to come clean. But does all this make Mayawati “above suspicion”, to use a Shakespear-ean expression?
Far from that, her victory in the court is a reflection of the political clout she wields and the legal and financial acumen she enjoys. Her biographer Ajoy Bose has, in his well-researched, objective and absorbing book, ‘Behenji’ (Elder Sister), documented how she had begun amassing property ever since she joined the Bahujan Samaj Party, floated by her mentor and political theorist, the late Kanshi Ram.
At the time the book was published, “she had 41 agricultural plots, 16 residential plots, seven shops, three orchards, two shops-cum-residences located in and around Delhi, a mansion in her ancestral village of Badalpur, described as a mini-Taj Mahal”, built on a sprawling estate, besides movable properties like diamond, gold and silver jewellery worth tens of millions of rupees. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt that the list was exaggerated.
Instead, let’s focus on her affidavit filed in March this year while contesting for the Rajya Sabha. She declared assets worth $200 million. Compared to her affidavit filed in 2007, her assets grew by $180,439 every month she ruled Uttar Pradesh for 58 months. The assets could not have grown to such levels in this short period, even after making allowance for inflation. Little surprise, she is considered one of the richest politicians in India.
For a person born in a lower middle class family, assets of this kind are simply unimaginable. Of course, she would say that much of the wealth was “gifted” by her party members. That leaves the question – why such contributions are converted into shopping malls and palatial houses – unanswered. Whatever be the “clean chit” she has got from the Supreme Court, she remains one of the most corrupt politicians.
While the focus is on her, there are politicians like Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, her predecessor M Karunanidhi, former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu who, too, have amassed huge properties. Another Andhra politician YS Jaganmohan Reddy, who is now in jail, has assets worth billions he inherited from his father, a middle class farmer before becoming chief minister, who died in a helicopter crash.
Politics was once considered a means to serve the people. The history of India’s freedom struggle is replete with instances of the rich forgetting their wealth, while immersing themselves in the pursuit of Independence. Nowadays, people join politics to make money, rather than to serve the people. The rich join politics to become richer and more powerful.
Hence, to single out Mayawati for her avarice is to turn a blind eye to the malaise that the whole political system suffers from. Even those who shout against corruption from their housetops change their tone when the person facing such a charge belongs to his caste, group or community. How else would Reddy’s party sweep by-election after by-election and Mayawati remain the icon of the poor and the oppressed?
Oman Tribune |
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