By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Friday issued notice to former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh and 26 others on a plea by the state government to prosecute them for wrongly misappropriating residential plots in the upscale Gomati Nagar area in Lucknow.
A bench of Justice C.K. Thakar and Justice Altmas Kabir also issued notice to Yadav’s brother Shivpal Singh Yadav and several other political bigwigs and bureaucrats, including former chief minister’s special secretary Anita Singh and principal secretary Anil Kumar.
The Uttar Pradesh government had approached the court for permission to launch prosecution in the case as it was seized of the matter through a public interest petition filed by a Congress leader Vishvanath Chaturvedi.
The petition had demanded cancellation of the illegal allotment in 2005 of the plots to the politicians and the bureaucrats and the court had earlier restrained the Lucknow Development Authority from transferring these.
Following a hue and cry in the media, Yadav had ordered a judicial probe. But the judicial commission headed by a former high court judge never completed the probe despite getting three extensions of six months each for the job.
After a change in the government in the state, new Chief Minister Mayawati handed over the responsibility of the probe to Lucknow Division’s Commissioner Vijay Shankar Pandey.
Pandey completed his probe on Sept 25, 2007 and concluded that the state was defrauded of a sum of nearly Rs.29 million owing to illegal allotment of plots, and recommended prosecution of several government officials.
Pandey also sought prosecution of the politicians and bureaucrats who were illegally allotted the plots.
Others who were given the plots included Navneet Sikera, Lucknow’s former senior Superintendent of Police, Kailashi Devi, wife of Lucknow Development Authority’s former Special Secretary Ram Vraksh Yadav, Preeti Choudhary, the wife of Jaupur District Magistrate Anurag Yadav.