Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh, accused in an FIR for alleged financial fraud amounting to Rs 500 crore, on friday demanded resignation of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati for hatching a "conspiracy" to defame him.
"The UP chief minister has hatched a criminal conspiracy to defame me and my family members by getting an FIR registered against us," Singh told reporters in Kolkata.
Singh, a Rajya Sabha MP, said that the UP chief minister, "out of vendetta politics" had the FIR registered against him and his family members and that she had no moral right to continue in power. "It also proves that she is scared of us."
He alleged that one Shivkant Tripathi at the behest of Mayawati had registered the FIR with the Babupurwa police station in Kanpur.
The FIR accused Singh of creating shell companies and illegally amalgamating firms for converting black money into white when the SP government was in power in that state, a charge the SP leader dismissed as "conjecture".
Singh said since the UP government had referred the case to the Kolkata police, he had also lodged an FIR with it against Mayawati and six others.
He said the companies named in the FIR in which he was a shareholder had informed him that they complied with all legal requirements including approval from the high court.
Singh claimed that the Income Tax and Company Affairs departments cleared it and the high court had given approval for the amalgamation of the companies.
The SP general secretary said he met Kolkata Police chief Gautam Mohan Chakraborty during the day.
Singh also demanded a CAG inquiry into the expenditure by the UP government on the construction of the Ambedkar Park in Noida.
The police commissioner, meanwhile, said the police had returned the FIR to the SP's office in Kanpur.
"They routed it directly to us though it should have come to us through court. We will not investigate the case as of now," he said. PTI
