Now Bhushans in land controversy
Advocates Shanti and Prashant Bhushan who had found themselves embroiled in the ?CD controversy? last week are now being linked to a new row for receiving land from Chief Minister Mayawati?s Uttar Pradesh government.
Media offices in Delhi on Apr 15 had received a compact disc containing a taped conversation between Shanti Bhushan, expelled Samajwadi Party member Amar Singh and party chief Mulayam Singh.
In the tape, Bhushan, a former law minister, allegedly suggested to the two influential politicians that a court judge can be bought out and his son Prashant can get the job done for Rs 4 crores. The contents of the tape are yet to officially verified.
Prashant Bhushan on Monday filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking criminal contempt action against Amar Singh for allegedly fabricating the CD from spliced conversations in an attempt to tarnish their reputation.
Amar Singh too filed a police complaint against the Bhushans for implicating him in the row, dubbed as the ?CD controversy?, alleging that it was the lawyer son-and-father who had distributed the audio tape.
On Wednesday, media reports said that Shanti Bhushan, co-chairman of the joint committee formed to draft the Jan Lokpal Bill, had failed to disclose that he had received a large plot of land at extremely low rates from the Mayawati government.
This 10,000 sq.m. of farmland allegedly received at less than a quarter of its market price, raises a conflict of interest question as Bhushan had appeared against the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister in the Noida statue park case, media reports said.
The matter was dug out as part of a petition filed in the Allahabad High Court by disgruntled former Additional Solicitor General Vikas Singh, who complained of being allotted ?one of the worst pieces of land?.
Former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, who was part of the campaign that forced the setting up of the Jan Lokpal Bill panel, reacted to the allegations saying that there seemed to be a concerted effort to tarnish the joint panel consisting of five ministers and five civil society representatives.
The Jan Lokpal Bill drafting committee was formed only after the coalition government at the Centre was virtually blackmailed to do so by Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare?s 98-hour long hunger strike demanding a fresh drafting of the bill pushed back for 42 years.