New Delhi, Nov 16 (Inditop.com) The Supreme Court Monday dismissed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s plea challenging an Allahabad High Court decision to entertain a lawsuit seeking revival of a corruption case in the multi-crore Taj Heritage Corridor scam.
A bench of Justice V.S. Sirpurkar and Justice B. Sudershan Reddy dismissed Mayawati’s plea and said that the apex court cannot stop high courts from taking up lawsuits.
“High courts across the country admit thousands of petitions every day. Can the Supreme Court start interfering with the high court’s orders at the stage of admission itself?” asked the bench.
As senior counsel K.K. Venugopal sought to raise the issue of instability of the state government due to the high court’s act of entertaining the lawsuit, the bench brushed aside the plea saying “we are not concerned”.
Venugopal sought the high court notice to his client be scrapped, and said it was “an abuse of the process of law”.
Since the court has dismissed her plea, Mayawati will now have to answer the Allahabad High Court notice — seeking her response to a public interest lawsuit that questioned former governor T.V. Rajeswar’s refusal in June 2007 to give sanction to prosecute her. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had asked for the governor’s sanction to prosecute Mayawati and a cabinet colleague for their alleged role in the corruption case.
The high court issued notice to Mayawati and her cabinet colleague Nasimuddin Siddique on Sep 18 and asked for their replies by Nov 9. The high court has slated the next hearing Nov 18.
The notices were issued by the high court division bench of Justice Pradeep Kant and Justice Shabibul Hasan. The public interest lawsuit was filed by Lucknow residents Kamlesh Verma, Anupama Singh and Qateel Ahmed.
The three have also questioned the CBI Lucknow court’s decision not to take cognizance of the CBI charge sheet against Mayawati and others in the Taj Corridor corruption case.
They have questioned the trial court’s 2007 order to the CBI to seek the governor’s sanction to prosecute Mayawati even when she was not the chief minister.
Mayawati in her plea to the apex court questioned the three litigants’ locus standi and the high court’s jurisdiction to contest the decisions of the governor and the CBI court in a criminal case.
She said that only the CBI could contest the decisions of the governor or the CBI court, and the bureau chose not to do so.
And since the deadline to question the governor’s order had lapsed 30 days after it was issued June 3, 2007, no plea for revival of the corruption case could be made against her.
She told the apex court that its three-judge bench, headed by erstwhile Justice S.B. Sinha, had refused on Oct 10, 2007, to interfere with the governor’s refusal of sanction to prosecute her.
The three-judge bench, which had ordered the CBI in September 2003 to probe the Taj Corridor scam, had ruled that it was not legally entitled to examine the legality of Governor Rajeshwar’s order.
The bench said the issue should be decided by a magisterial court instead.
The bench, however, had hoped then that the CBI would challenge the governor’s order before other appropriate courts, including the Allahabad High Court.
In fact, it had also said that in case the CBI refused to exercise this discretion, there was all possibility of the matter being brought to some appropriate court’s notice through a public interest lawsuit.
The ambitious 2002-03 Taj Heritage Corridor project was aimed to house a shopping mall close to the Taj Mahal, but the project was abandoned amid allegations of large-scale corruption and after a hue and cry that it would endanger the monument.
