Amended assets rules by NTR helped Jaya get bail

As the leading man in his long film career, N.T. Rama Ra had come to the rescue of then top actor Jayalalithaa in reel life.

In real life as well, NTR, as Chief Minister, helped — albeit posthumously — provide a legal handle for Ms Jayalalithaa to successfully fight the `66 crore wealth case in Bengaluru on Monday.

As Chief Minister, NTR had changed certain guidelines for the ACB in dealing with cases regarding disproportionate assets.

The NTR government had increased the margin of disproportionate assets to 20 per cent to prosecute state staff in corruption cases. Karnataka High Court judge C.R. Kumaraswamy in his judgement while acquitting Ms Jayalalithaa on Monday quoted the changes brought by the NTR government. In his judgement, Justice Kumaraswamy said (Page Number 740): “The government of Andhra Pradesh issued Memo no 700/SC d/88-4 dated 13-2-1989 for the benefit of government servants giving certain guidelines to the Anti-Corruption Bureau.., to give allowance of a reasonable margin of 20 per cent on the total income of a government servant while computing disproportionate assets.”

Jutice Kumaraswamy noted that on the basis of this memorandum of the state government, the High Court of Andhra Pradesh in S. Thiremolaiah verses State of AP “in which the learned judge has given the benefit of this government memo to the appellant.”

The judge noted that the appellant in that case was prosecuted in the year 1983, six years before the NTR government issued the memo. The judge said that the margin of disproportionate assets in Ms Jayalalithaa case was 8.2 per cent.