As the Opposition mounted a strident campaign based on a >“grave arithmetic error” in the Karnataka High Court judgment that acquitted former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in the disproportionate assets case, the AIADMK side has come up with an explanation for the “miscalculation.”
An AIADMK source said though the judgment had erred in computing the total loans treated as income of the accused, funds raised through a subscription scheme of Namadhu MGR, the party mouthpiece, were omitted. If this amount was added, the total amount of loan works out to over Rs. 24 crore.
Opposition parties say the High Court had wrongly calculated the total loan amount as Rs. 24.17 crore, whereas the components mentioned in a table on Page 852 of the judgement added up to just Rs. 10.67 crore. As a result, the percentage of disproportionate assets to income would exceed 10 per cent, making the accused liable for conviction.
“The order has not included about Rs. 13.5 crore of non-refundable deposits that Jaya Publications got from the subscription scheme. In our view, since the scheme had been accepted, this amount had to be treated as unsecured loan,” the source said on condition of anonymity.
The judge, under the head “Jaya Publications and Namadhu MGR”, gives an income figure of Rs. 4 crore. This figure, according to the source, was the company’s income from other sources, without including the subscription scheme. “Even this Rs. 4 crore is a round figure, but the actual income was Rs. 4.18 crore.”
'Disproportionate assets below 10%'
AIADMK sources say that if the Namadhu MGR subscription scheme was accepted as income from loans, the percentage of ‘disproportionate assets’ held by former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and her associates would remain below 10 per cent.
“The table of loans treated as income does contain an error, but this is not serious enough to change the outcome,” a party source said.
However, on a reading of the judgment, it is not clear if the judge has accepted the subscription scheme in its entirety. The judge has noted the delay on the part of the company in filing the relevant income tax returns and said “it is a suspicious circumstance. ”
