Lucknow:
After playing cat and mouse with Mulayam Singh Yadav for six years, the UPA looks all set to close the CBI's investigation into whether he and his family amassed crores of assets way beyond their earnings.
But this would be turning its back on its own preliminary findings.
In its preliminary enquiry in October 2007, in response to a petition by Congress activist Vishwanath Chaturvedi, the CBI listed in detail the rapid rise in the fortunes of Mulayam Singh Yadav and his family.
From just three bighas of land in 1993, the CBI found that by 2005, the family owned a string of real estate assets in Etawah, Saifai and Lucknow which, by the family's own tax submissions shows Rs 2.6 crores of disproportionate assets.
The CBI also listed the many assets and deals not declared, which they say hints at even bigger fraudulence and asked for permission to register cases of criminal misconduct against Mulayam and Akhilesh, and begin the probe.
That permission never came.
Instead, the case took a crucial step backwards in mid-2008, when the UPA, short on numbers, sought Mulayam's support for the trust vote on the Nuclear deal.
Eight days before the Nuclear deal vote, Mulayam's daughter-in-law, Dimple Yadav, made the first of three presentations on her investments, not to the CBI but to the Prime Minister's Office. The matter was referred to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT). This was a baffling move, given that the DoPT is the administrative ministry of the CBI, and has no authority to hear those under the CBI's scanner.
What followed next only strengthened the suspicion of a backroom deal.
Dimple argued before the DoPT that she should be excluded from the probe since the tax returns of all four Yadavs were assessed separately, a startling claim since many of the land deals were done jointly.
But the CBI thought it fit to seek the advice of the then Solicitor General of India, Goolam E Vahanvati, who submitted a six-page opinion in which he cited previous court judgments to argue that the burden of proof is on the investigators to show that Dimple's assets were not benami. Until then her assets, cannot be clubbed with Mulayam.
Despite this controversial opinion, a month later the CBI, in a virtual admission of the political instructions, told the court that 'in view of the legal advice and directions of the Union of India', they want to withdraw the case against the Yadavs.
The court reserved judgement for three years, finally ruling in December last year that Dimple should be excluded from the investigation since she is a private citizen, despite her proximity to Akhilesh Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Now as the UPA seeks Mulayam Singh Yadav's support for the Food Bill, the CBI has a handy excuse in the Supreme Court order. CBI sources told us that Dimple's exclusion is the main reason why they are about to finally close the chapter on Mulayam's investigation. This would be a blatant ignoring of the evidence in their own preliminary report that Dimple's wealth, is only a fraction of the wealth of the Yadav family.
Of the CBI's calculation of the disproportionate assets of the Mulayam family of Rs 2.6 crores, Dimple Yadav's contribution is only Rs 76 lakhs.
Of all the purchases, the CBI had found Dimple owned only one major property in her own name, a 900 square foot plot on Lucknow's prime MG Road, bought in June 2004, and rented out to Royal Bank of Scotland.
The price was only Rs. 7 lakhs, which comes to about Rs. 780 per square foot.
The market value at that time was Rs 5000 per square foot, which would have made this a Rs. 45 lakhs plot.
By excluding Dimple, only this one deal would be left out. But all remaining purchases - which follow the same pattern, of rock bottom deals in prime locations - are jointly in the name of Akhilesh and Dimple, or in the name of Akhilesh alone, as well as his step brother Prateek, and of the course the patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, which the Supreme Court has not put any restriction on probing.
Three months after the purchase of the plot in Dimple's name, the CBI lists Akhilesh and Dimple jointly making another bargain purchase in the same location - this time of a 3000 square foot plot for only Rs 20 lakhs.
The rate comes to Rs 666 per square foot, even less than what Dimple paid just five months ago.
At market rate, the plot would be worth at least Rs. 1.5 crores.
The following year, in January 2005, the CBI report lists another bargain purchase by Akhilesh and Dimple jointly in a prime area - a 24,000 square foot plot in Lucknow's elite Vikramaditya Marg for Rs 35 lakhs.
The sale deed shows it was bought from Delhi-based Ujwala Ram Nath.
The argument to justify such an absurdly low price of just Rs. 146 a square foot is that it is Nazul land or land acquired by the Government on a long term lease and therefore under dispute. Also Akhilesh and Dimple had to pay Rs. 40 lakh conversion fee. But it is also worth noting that the conversions took place when Mulayam was serving his third term as Chief Minister, and held the Housing and Urban Planning portfolios.
Even at a price of Rs. 70 lakhs, the plot is well below the market rate of around Rs. 7.2 crores.
The question of course is, that where is the family getting its money from?
Less than half of Mulayam and Akhilesh's income comes from their salaries as Chief Minister, MLA, MP, and from agricultural income. But the other half of their total income simply listed as gifts totalling Rs. 2.5 crores, some of which the CBI says is based on false or forged documents.
Another source of funding has been their extraordinary good fortune with land deals. While the Yadavs were buying land at a bargain in Lucknow's Vikramaditya Marg they managed to sell land at market rates, just 10 kilometres away.
The CBI report mentions that in 1997 Akhilesh bought less than an acre of land in the Faizabad Road area for Rs 13.5 lakhs, at a rate of Rs 38 per square foot, low even at that time.
On October 7, 2005, Akhilesh sold about just over a bigha of this land to Liza Builders of Moradabad for Rs 2.5 crores.
On the same day, his stepbrother, Prateek Yadav sold a plot of adjoining land for the same amount, Rs 2.5 crores, also to Liza Builders.
Both sold it at around Rs 1000 per square foot, three times more than what they were buying land for in another part of Lucknow in the same year.
On the same day, October 7, 2005, Prateek picked up a 14,000 square foot plot at Vikramaditya Marg from a Lucknow-based builder Sanjay Seth, of SAS Group, for Rs 1.72 crores, closer to market rate.
The petitioner in the case, Vishwanath Chaturvedi, claims the family has used ill-gotten wealth to finance these purchases. But the Samajwadi Party claims that these are from the legitimate earnings of Mulayam Singh Yadav and his family.
But given the haste with which the UPA is looking to give this case a burial, we will never know whether extraordinary good luck or more dubious reasons lie behind these land deals, which form the core of the Yadav's sprawling multi-crore real estate empire.