PIL against Lalu was different from Mulayam case, says SC

A plea by UP CM Mulayam Singh Yadav that the Supreme Court dismiss as politically motivated a PIL filed against him by a Congress activist was rejected by the Court on Thursday which held that reasons for quashing a similar petition against Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav did not apply in Mulayam’s case.

Ordering a go-ahead to a preliminary enquiry by the CBI into allegations of disproportionate assets owned by Mulayam Singh Yadav and his family members, a two-member Bench brushed aside allegations that the PIL filed by Congress activist Vishwanath Chaturvedi was motivated by political considerations. “An enquiry should not be shut out at the threshold just because a political opponent of a person with political differences raises an allegation of commission of offence.”

The Bench said the verdict in a similar case against Lalu could not be applied for dismissing the PIL against the SP chief on ground of its maintainability. Mulayam had pleaded that his case should be considered under the same light as that of Lalu and that the same decision should be applied. “The said decision, in our opinion, has no application to the facts of this case,” the Bench comprising Justices A R Lakshmanan and Altamas Kabir said.