Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, fighting perhaps the toughest battle of his political career in Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in a bid to bounce back, is keeping his fingers crossed on the much speculated tieup with the Congress in the post-poll scenario as it would largely depend on the Supreme Court judgment on his assets likely to come anytime before January 28.
The judgment on his application challenging the Central government’s authority to assess the CBI’s status report has been pending for almost three years now and is likely to come any time before January 28 as one of the judges in the bench, Justice Cyriac Joseph, is retiring on that date.
The other judge who heard the case is Justice Altamas Kabir and they had reserved the verdict on the applications of Mr Mulayam Singh, his sons Akhilesh and Prateek and daughter-in-law Dimple way back on February 10, 2009 seeking “correction” of March 2007 order of the top court for a CBI probe into their assets and submitting the status report to the Centre for follow-up action.
This is seen as one of the most “politically sensitive” case of recent time under probe by the CBI.
The March 2007 order passed just ahead of the last UP Assembly elections by a bench headed by Justice A.R. Lakshman was described as “unusual” and against the principle of natural justice by counsel for Mr Mulayam Singh and his family members contending that the Congress-led UPA government could not be expected to be “impartial” in assessing the CBI report and might use it as “political tool to browbeat” Mr Mulayam Singh and his party.
It came on a PIL of Vishwanath Chaturvedi, a Congress worker from UP whom the party had virtually “disowned” after the 2008 alignment with the SP during the trust vote against the UPA-1 reportedly “manoeuvred” the then SP secretary general Amar Singh, now out of the party.
In fact, when the judgment on the Yadavs’ application had been pending since February 10, 2009, Mulayam and his family members filed another set of petitions for “complete review” of the 2007 order for a CBI probe into their assets in the backdrop of changing equation between the two parties.
The irony is that the verdict on their review petitions, heard by a bench of Justice Kabir and H.L. Dattu, also has been pending decision since February 18, 2011.
According to the legal experts and political pundits, the expected judgment of Justices Kabir and Joseph would have serious political implications for both the Congress and SP in the UP elections. If it goes in favour of Mulayam, it is bound to give him a much needed “fillip” and an upper hand in his possible tie-up with the Congress in the post-poll scenario. But if the CBI probe was upheld by the top court, it is bound to spoil whatever “little cordial” relations existed between the two parties, they say.
However, a complete “u-turn” was witnessed in the Centre and CBI’s approach in the top court after the 2008 support of the SP to the UPA as the agency had “withdrawn” its 2006 application stating that a “prima facie” case for probe was made out and changing its stance that in a subsequent applications filed by the Yadavs before the agency, they had given documentary proof of their assets and tax returns, hence there was no point on continuing with the investigation.
This was taken very seriously by Justices Kabri and Joseph’s before reserving the verdict on February 18, 2009 as the judges bluntly told the CBI “You are acting at the behest of the central government and the law ministry. You are not acting on your own.”