New Delhi:
Six years after it began investigating whether he is guilty of corruption, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), according to sources, is close to completing its inquiry against Mulayam Singh Yadav, the chief of the Samajwadi Party, whose support is indispensable for the minority government.
The top man at the CBI, Ranjit Sinha, will decide soon whether to charge Mr Yadav and his son, Akhilesh, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, for accumulating assets that cannot be explained by their income. The verdict is likely to be shared before Parliament begins its Monsoon Session on August 5; but the CBI's decision will need to be endorsed by the Supreme Court, which is monitoring the case.
Sources say that the Yadavs can claim that their wealth grew because of loans from relatives that were later converted into gifts. They have also claimed that their investments grew substantially during 1993-2005, the period under scrutiny, and the CBI may not be able to prove that the returns were illicit or affixed to the misuse of public office.
The man whose Public Interest Litigation or PIL prompted the Supreme Court to sanction the inquiry in 2007 says that the Congress is leaning on the CBI to protect Mr Yadav, whose 22 Lok Sabha MPs are indispensable for the minority government.
The government needs the support of the Samajwadi Party to push through a new law on Food Security, which entitles nearly 70% of India's population to highly subsidised food. The Congress is counting on this scheme as a major vote-getter for the national election, due by May.
The CBI has, through its six-year investigation, see-sawed between whether its investigation is yielding dividends. Critics say that the Congress has leveraged the case to pressure Mr Yadav into supporting it on crucial legislation - the nuclear deal with the US in 2008, for example.