Faced with the CVC’s go-ahead for her prosecution in the Rs 175-crore Taj Corridor case, former UP Chief Minister Mayawati has moved the apex court to include her as a party in the case. Given a week to present her case, she will be arguing in an application to be filed in the Court this Thursday that the ‘‘CVC is not empowered to make any such recommendation.’’Her counsel, Satish Chandra Mishra, a former state advocate general, says they will be arguing that CVC is prohibited from recommending prosecution or disposal in a case under Prevention of Corruption Act, registered and investigated by the CBI. ‘‘The CVC has no power to recommend such prosecution under Section 8(B) of the CVC Act, 2003, which prohibits it from doing so,’’ he says. ‘‘The CBI is the investigating body which can recommend prosecution. and the CBI has filed a closure report saying there is no evidence against Mayawati. This will be the crux of our application.’’Harping on the conflicting views of the CBI and the CVC in the matter, Mayawati’s counsel pleaded before SC yesterday to include Mayawati as a party in the case.The CVC had yesterday told the Supreme Court that there was ‘‘good’’ evidence to prosecute Mayawati in the case under the Prevention of Corruption Act lodged by the CBI in October 2003. This is exactly what Mayawati’s application would object to. ‘‘After the CBI completed its investigation and filed a closure report, all power rests with the magistrate to send the case back to CBI for re-investigation if he is not satisfied,’’ says Mishra.‘‘The CVC can at the most be asked — that too when the CBI investigation is in progress — to see if the investigation is going on properly and would get completed within a deadline, if any. But here, the CVC is recommending prosecution in a case in which the CBI investigation is already complete,’’ points out Mishra.On March 14 this year, the Supreme Court had sent the entire CBI case material against Mayawati to the CVC for its opinion whether she should be prosecuted. SC summoned evidence collected by the CBI after Attorney-General Milon Bannerjee’s call for closure of the case against Mayawati.The investigating officer and five others were of the opinion that Mayawati could be prosecuted whereas the Director (Prosecution) and CBI director U S Mishra felt no chargesheet could be filed. Significantly, the CVC had not asked for the AG’s opinion and had examined the CBI’s case file in isolation.
