Uttar Pradesh [Images] Chief Minister Mayawati [Images] on Thursday ordered prosecution of a dozen officers of the elite Indian Police Service (IPS) for their alleged involvement in a police recruitment scam during the earlier tenure of her sworn political rival and predecessor Mulayam Singh Yadav [Images], the Samajwadi Party chief.

Interestingly, each of the officers were widely known for their proximity to Yadav, whose brother  and then minister Shivpal Yadav was sitting at the helm of  recruitment of some 22000 policemen.

As many as 18,000 of those policemen were sacked by the Mayawati government following a high-level probe, that exposed the blatant flow of money and large-scale unlawful practices including sexual exploitation of women applicants .

As many as 34 IPS officers were suspended in connection with the irregularities in the recruitment , they were all reinstated in a surprise move within the next two months.

However , the anti-corruption department was asked to probe the conduct of these officers .

"Following completion of reports in case of 12 those officers, the government has decided to initiate prosecution proceedings against them", a top government spokesman told reporters.

"While the administration has been directed to prepare for lodging of criminal cases against them, a communication has been sent to the Union Home Ministry to seek their concurrence as all of them belong to an all-India service" he added.

Each of the officers is of the deputy inspector general rank in which capacity they had headed the respective recruitment boards in different districts.

These included Daljit Singh Chaudhary,Shailendra  Pratap Singh, Ramendra Vikram Singh, Chabi Nath Singh, S.K.Gupta, V.K.Agarwal, B.B.Bakshi , R.S.Yadav, Malkhan Singh Yadav, B.S.Tripathi, Satish Chandra Mathur and Akhilesh Mehrotra.