It condemns her but does not convict her. This is because the Supreme Court, when it exonerated Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa today in the Tansi land scam cases, found her guilty of violating not the law but a purely voluntary code of conduct adopted by Tamil Nadu. In other words, her role in the Tansi land deal may be immoral but can’t be said to be illegal. This conflict between law and morality is most evident in the Supreme Court’s finding on Jayalalithaa’s tell-tale signatures as an applicant on the documents leading to the sale of Tansi land to her firms. The bench headed by Justice S Rajendra Babu held that ‘‘there is overwhelming evidence on record to indicate that Jayalalithaa has signed the documents in question.’’ Further, calling it an issue that worries its ‘‘conscience,’’ the Supreme Court said: ‘‘Jayalalithaa, in her anxiety to save her skin, went to any length even to deny her signature on documents which her auditor and other government officials identified.’’ All this demolishes her claim that she as chief minister was unaware of the property transactions between her firms and Tansi, a corporation of the Tamil Nadu Government. Yet, the apex court went on to Jaya exonerated acquit her in spite of admitting that ‘‘her denial appears to be too naive to be accepted in a court of law.’’ But in the same breath the judges said ‘‘it is unnecessary to dilate on this aspect anymore.’’ Why? Because there is anyway no ‘‘dispute,’’ they say, about the fact that the two Tansi proporties have been sold to firms in which Jayalalithaa and Sasikala Natarajan are partners. In the court’s reasoning, she is not guilty of any legal offence whether she was personally involved in the transaction or not. If she still took the trouble of disowning her own signatures, it was because she did not know that she could buy Tansi with impunity. ‘‘May be Jayalalithaa might have tried to be unduly cautious without fully understanding the implications in law,’’ Justice Babu said. Meaning, she was under the wrong impression that her actions would have adverse legal implications. What is in issue is Section 169 IPC which forbids a public servant to buy or bid certain property if he is ‘‘legally bound’’ not to do so. The code of conduct bars even the CM to buy any government property. But even if the Tansi land is taken to be government property, the apex court held that Jayalalithaa did not commit any illegality because the code of conduct is not enforceable.
