SC quashes assets case against Mayawati

Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and BSP supremo Mayawati scored a major victory when the Supreme Court quashed nine-year-old criminal proceedings against her in the disproportionate assets case. The court also rapped the CBI for its conduct and remarked that when passing its judgment in the Taj corridor project in 2002, it did not ask the premier investigative agency to probe her assets. Mayawati approached the court for quashing the assets case filed by CBI.

The bench consisting of judges P Sathasivam and Dipak Misra thus allowed the appeal Mayawati, who had maintained throughout that the corruption case was politically motivated. She had also alleged that successive governments at the centre were misusing the CBI against political rivals to settle political scores. The judgment stated that the CBI probe was “unwarranted” and without understanding its earlier order in the Taj corridor case. That order was to probe against the guilty officials and there was no direction to file a second first information report against the then chief minister herself under the Prevention of Corruption Act, relating to her alleged disproportionate assets.

The Supreme Court also emphasised that there was no finding in the CBI's status report that Mayawati had amassed disproportionate assets during 1995-2003.