Prayagraj, 12th August 2021: A Prayagraj court has ordered a preliminary inquiry into the alleged fake degree allegations against Deputy CM Keshav Maurya.
The Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday directed the police to conduct a preliminary inquiry in the matter. ACJM Prayagraj Namrata Singh ordered the in-charge of Prayagraj Cantt to submit a point-wise report within a week. Along with this, he has given the date of August 25 for the next hearing.
The first point on which the police have to investigate is whether the second year degree issued by the Hindi Sahitya Sammelan to the Deputy CM is authentic. The second point of investigation is whether the alleged forged certificates have been used in the election affidavits as per the allegations. Along with this, the court has also directed an inquiry into the allegation of use of fake high school certificates by the Deputy CM to get the petrol pump as he has been also accused of having obtained a petrol pump of Indian Oil on the basis of forged certificates.
The ACJM Court has given this order on the basis of the decision given by the Supreme Court in Priyanka Srivastava vs State of UP case. On 19 March 2015, Supreme Court Judge Justice Dipak Misra gave the verdict in this case. In the alleged fake degree case against Deputy CM Keshav Maurya, the court had reserved the verdict on August 7 after hearing it. RTI activist Diwakar Tripathi had filed a petition in this case and made serious allegations against Deputy CM Keshav Maurya. He alleged the use of fake degrees in five different elections. Apart from this, he was also accused of obtaining a petrol pump on the basis of an alleged fake degree.
In his petition, the RTI activist demanded the re-election of Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya and cancellation of the allotment of petrol pumps. The petition states that Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya had contested the 2007 assembly elections from the Western constituency of the city. After this, he contested the assembly elections in 2012 from Sirathu seat. In 2014, he contested the Lok Sabha elections from Phulpur.