Another day, another balloon goes pffft

The Adarsh Housing Society scam first hit the headlines in 2010. Eight years later, today, the Bombay High Court set aside the sanction, given in February 2016, by Maharashtra governor Vidyasagar Rao to prosecute former state Chief Minister Ashok Chavan. Here is the part that should make you sit up and take notice:

A division bench of Justices Ranjit More and Sadhana Jadhav ruled that though the CBI had claimed to be in possession of fresh evidence against Mr. Chavan at the time of seeking the sanction, it “failed to present any fresh evidence”.

So here we go again. A scam is unearthed – and make no mistake, there was much about how bureaucrats, politicians of various parties, and senior military officers conspired to bend FSI, zoning and ownership rules in exchange for flats that was patently fraudulent.

 

With much fanfare, the CBI steps in. Media houses vie with each other to quote ‘unnamed CBI sources’ making a series of sensational claims of proof. The case drags its way through the courts at a pace any self-respecting snail would scorn. And finally, when the verdict is in, it turns out the investigation was shoddy (it is increasingly difficult to avoid the suspicion that often it is deliberately so),  no real proof was presented, and yet another scam gets buried. The media for its part moves on to the next narrative — have you ever seen an instance where the media went to its ‘sources’ and demanded an explanation for all the tall claims?

 

Just a passing thought, on a busy day.

“Not proven”

In Scotland, courts have the option of picking from three possible verdicts: Guilty, Not Guilty, and Not Proven.

It is this third verdict that the CBI special court actually pronounced today at the conclusion of the prolonged hearings into the 2G scam, some seven years after a report by then Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai rocked Parliament, gave wings to the BJP’s anti-corruption plank, and led to the then UPA government fighting a losing battle at the polls.

Only, since it does not have the third option available to it, the court acquitted.

Special judge O.P. Saini said, “I have no hesitation in holding that record is not sufficient and the prosecution has miserably failed in proving charges. All accused are acquitted.”

The U-turn sarkar

May 25, 2014: The then Delhi BJP chief Harsh Vardhan says that the first issue he will take up with the prime minister, if his party won the Lok Sabha polls, was the cause of granting full statehood to the capital city. The move, he said, would solve the problem of multiple authorities; he said the NDA had earlier tabled a relevant bill in Parliament but the successor UPA government had not followed up.

Harsh Vardhan’s predecessor Madan Lal Khurana had made a similar demand in 2003, coincidentally, again, just ahead of assembly elections. “The BJP leadership at the Centre says it is drafting a new Delhi Statehood Bill,” the article points out. “This is something it had done in 1998 as well, a few months before the assembly elections in November that year.”

Mallya, redux

All that talk of how Vijay Mallya, that modern day Scarlet Pimpernell, cleverly evaded the long arm of the law?

The Central Bureau of Investigation had prior knowledge that businessman Vijay Mallya, who is facing charges of defaulting on a Rs.900-crore loan from IDBI Bank, was to board a London-bound flight at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here on March 2.

Airport sources said the Immigration department had on the afternoon of March 2 intimated the CBI that Mr. Mallya was to board the flight. It is learnt that he arrived at the airport around 1 p.m. for the flight that was scheduled to take off at 1.45 p.m.

Even now, there is no restriction on Mr. Mallya’s foreign visits. Therefore, legally, he is allowed to go abroad. He is a non-resident Indian and has to remain abroad for at least 183 days every year to retain the status. He has a 10-year British business visa.

Hey, we didn’t catch him because no one — in government, in opposition, in law enforcement — wanted to catch him. So enough with the pretense already.