Yogi Adityanath proves he is no 'CM with a difference'
Fifty-three days on, Uttar Pradesh's saffron-clad chief minister Yogi Adityanath was out to prove that here was a "CM with a difference". But what he did quite blatantly on the 54th day took away, in one stroke, all the sheen from the image that he had been able to create for himself.
The government headed by this 44-year-old sadhu-turned-politician flatly denied permission to its own police to prosecute him in a riots case in which he has been accused of making a hate speech in 2007.
The issue was raised through a public interest litigation (PIL) before the Allahabad High Court. The IPC sections sought to be invoked against Yogi necessitated the state government’s permission to initiate prosecution proceedings against him.
The sanction had been pending even with the Akhilesh Yadav government that surprisingly chose to sit over it.
And now when a reminder was issued and the chief secretary was summoned by the court, the Uttar Pradesh government filed an affidavit , denying permission to prosecute its chief minister.
Interestingly, the permission was denied on the ground that preliminary investigations by the police had termed the recordings as “morphed”.
That's not surprising because it's an old tactic often adopted by politicians to get themselves a clean chit, particularly from charges of making hate speeches or indulgence in corrupt activities.
Cops too find it convenient to build an alibi on those very lines whenever their investigations are “pre-determined".
There have been umpteen cases in the past when politicians managed to get away with murder by anyhow establishing that the evidence against them were “fabricated” in one form or the other.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav managed to "prove" that a CD carrying his audio clips, issuing threats to senior IPS officer Amitabh Thakur, were “doctored”.
Last year, a sting operation exposed the then Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat offering money to buy the support of some legislators to save his government . But when the matter was taken to court, Rawat managed to get away by skillfully building the benefit of doubt on the simple plea that the recordings were “doctored”.
The infamous CD of Amar Singh in conversation with bureaucrats, industrialists and Bollywood actresses had also put him to much embarrassment . But eventually, he moved the apex court to get the contents of the CD banned from public display on the same plea that the CDs were morphed.
One-time BJP national president Bangaru Laxman, who was caught on camera, accepting money, too pleaded innocence and eventually got away by proving that the CDs in question were altered. He, however, was later found to be guilty of accepting bribe and convicted by a Delhi court.
A few years back , BJP MP Varun Gandhi got reprieve from the courts, even as video clips showed him making highly provocative and inflammatory speeches in Pilibhit, his parliamentary constituency. Varun succeeded in creating doubts about the authenticity of the recordings on the usual plea that the CDs were "doctored”.
More recently, BSP supremo Mayawati sought to term as “fake”, her own voice recording, exposing her underhand demand for money from her now expelled party leader Nasimuddin Siddiqui.
It's strange that politicians involved in all such cases have invariably got away in judicial scrutiny, thanks to highly paid top professional lawyers who always find a convenient escape route for their affluent political clients.
So, it was not surprising that on Thursday when Yogi Adityanath too got a "clean chit" on the charge of making inflammatory speeches, that incited communal passions and sparked off violent Hindu-Muslim clashes in his hometown, Gorakhpur, way back in 2007.
Interestingly, it was none other than CBI’s own forensic laboratory that found his recordings to be “doctored”.
It was another matter that the CBI forensic lab report was issued towards the end of 2014 after Narendra Modi came to power at the Centre.
No wonder, the Yogi government’s chief secretary, Rahul Bhatnagar, found sufficient convincing reasons to ensure a "clean chit" for the chief minister.
And the official plea that none of the other BJP leaders facing similar accusations as Yogi, had been prosecuted, also came in handy to let him off the hook.
Surely, where there is will, there’s way – and who knows it better than India’s politicians of all hues.
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