By IANS,
New Delhi : Calling it a “malicious campaign” by corrupt people, Lokpal bill joint committee co-chair Shanti Bhushan Wednesday denied that he and his lawyer son Jayant Bhushan had taken two plots in Noida from Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s discretionary quota.
Bhushan said the report in a national daily that the family got plots in Noida at below cost prices was “false”. The Bhushans have also said they would file a defamation case against the newspaper that reported that Shanti and Jayant Bhushan got two 10,000 sq metre plots “for a song”.
“The report in the Indian Express this morning mischievously suggests that Jayant Bhushan and I have taken two farm plots from Mayawati from her discretionary quota.
“These are not allotment from any discretionary quota. To suggest that the allotment has been obtained from any discretionary quota is totally false and misleading,” Bhushan said in statement here.
Giving procedural details of the allotment, Bhushan said: “So far, possession has not been delivered, nor the lease deal executed. It is only after the plot has been made approachable by construction of roads that possession would be delivered and lease executed.
“We also expected that if the number of applicants was more than the number of plots planned, there would be a draw of lots and we were surprised when an intimation in January 2010 was received that without any draw of lots a plot was being offered to us.
“We assumed that probably fewer persons might have applied for the plots than the number of plots planned by the NOIDA authority and therefore all applicants might have been offered plots.”
Bhushan said if there had been any arbitrariness, the allotments should be cancelled.
Refuting the allegation of favours from Mayawati, Bhushan said: “It is also to be noted that both myself and my son Jayant Bhushan have been fighting cases against Mayawati in courts and the question of obtaining favours from her or her government does not arise at all.
“Jayant was fighting the case against the Mayawati government on the Mayawati statues along the Noida bird sanctuary. I and Prashant Bhushan have been regularly appearing in PILs against Mayawati in the Taj corridor case even as recently as last week. These cases are still continuing,” he added.
His son Jayant added that the allegations were “just continuation of attempts to tarnish the reputation of my father and my brother who are members of the joint-committee to draft the Lokpal bill”.
Shanti Bhushan and his son Prashant, who is also a member of the panel to form a law to fight corruption, have come under attack since the formation of the 10-member committee to draft the Lokpal (ombudsman) Bill.
Vikas Singh, the lawyer who has challenged the allotment of the Noida land in the Allahabad High Court, said he had not taken the name of the Bhushans.
“My petition doesn’t mention their name. I got an allotment, and I felt the allotment was only to people who were raising corruption issues in UP. So I filed a petition against it,” Vikas Singh told television channels.
Defending the Bhushans, activist and former Indian Police Service officer Kiran Bedi said the Bhushan family had got land through fair means.
“The government issued a scheme, they applied for it, anybody can apply, they applied. If the matter is before the court and the court scraps it, they say let it be scrapped, so what is the issue then?” Bedi, who was part of the movement led by Anna Hazare that prompted the joint panel to draft a more stringent law against corruption, said.
Activist Swami Agnivesh said there would be no change in the committee.
“The more they try to divide us, more we will stay put. We will galvanise the people’s movement against corruption and will stay together, come what may,” Agnivesh said.
Shanti Bhushan has been in the news for the circulation of a CD, which has a man purportedly meant to be the veteran lawyer telling Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and former party general secretary Amar Singh that a judge could be “fixed” for Rs.4 crore.