Mayawati is off the hook in Taj case

UP Governor TV Rajeswar declines to give sanction to prosecute Maya, reports Umesh Raghuvanshi.

Governor TV Rajeswar has declined to sanction the prosecution of Chief Minister Mayawati and her minister Naseemuddin Siddiqui on corruption charges, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told the court hearing the Taj Heritage Corridor case on Tuesday.

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“I hold that there is no prima-facie case to charge Mayawati. There was no forgery either. There was no corruption on her part,” said the governor in his 23-page order communicated to the CBI on June 3.

Satish Chandra Mishra, UP minister and Mayawati's top aide, said the court decided not to proceed after the CBI communicated the governor’s order to it.

The case relates to the move - subsequently abandoned - to build a Rs 175 crore land corridor along the banks of Yamuna near the Taj Mahal in Agra in 2002. Mayawati, who was the chief minister then, was among the six accused of corruption in this matter.

The governor, while denying sanction to prosecute Mayawati, discussed 41 points of the Taj Heritage Corridor scam in his order. He said the fact that Mayawati had written to Union minister TR Balu for sanction of the project and that the Mission Management Board consisting of state and the central government officers regularly discussed the project, among other things, “go to show that the serious offence with which Mayawati and the minister were charged do not stand scrutiny”.