In what was being seen as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's first major bid to open the Pandora's Box on gross misdeeds of the Mulayam Singh Yadav government, the UP government on Monday ordered a CBI probe into land allotments in Noida.

The inquiry will go into the irregularities in the allotment of 99 plots at prime locations in Noida. This is bound to open a can of worms for the previous government.

Highly placed sources said, "Most of the allotments were made at the behest of Mulayam's Man Friday Amar Singh, who was virtually calling the shots in matters of allotments in Noida and Greater Noida."

The beneficiaries allegedly included influential politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen as well as some powerful members of the top judiciary, including a retired chief justice.

Earlier, even as a public interest litigation was moved before the Allahabad High Court to expose the bungling in these allotments, Amar Singh managed to pre-empt a CBI probe into the case by hastily appointing a one-man judicial commission to go into the case. 

It was no surprise that the Supreme Court promptly stayed the high court's order on the state government's plea that since a judicial commission was already in place, there was no need for a CBI probe.

That the judicial commission was set up only to circumvent the legal process became amply evident now when the new state government discovered that it had failed to even take off. Retired High Court Judge A N Gupta who was supposed to carry out the probe virtually did nothing in its nearly one-year-long stint.

Apparently, inaction by the commission came in handy for Mayawati government to now entrust the inquiry to the CBI.