The CBI on Tuesday sought two weeks’ time to file its say on an application filed by an activist, questioning the Maharashtra Governor K Sankarnaraynan’s order refusing sanction to prosecute former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan in the Adarsh society scam.
Hearing a plea by former journalist-turned activist Ketan Tirodkar, a HC division bench of justices PV Hardas and Ajey Gadkari adjourned the hearing for two weeks, after CBI sought time to file its affidavit.
Citing a Supreme Court order, Tirodkar had said in his application that the CBI did not require any sanction from the Governor to prosecute in cases which are monitored by the judiciary.
“The Supreme Court ruled that there is no requirement of sanction for the CBI under section 6(A) of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act to prosecute the Government servants in cases that are being monitored by the judiciary,” Tirodkar stated in his application.
Tirodkar, who had moved the high court after the Governor refused permission to CBI to prosecute Chavan, stated that the documents submitted by the apex investigating agency to the Governor along with its plea for sanction to prosecute Chavan, were fool-proof in nature.
The petitioner said that the documents in question clearly nailed Chavan’s “faulty” decision to grant additional FSI to the controversial housing society. He said the documents established the act of quid pro quo on the part of Chavan, since the former Chief Minister’s “mother-in-law and brother of his father-in-law were allotted flats in the society”.
In his order rejecting the CBI’s plea for sanction to prosecute Chavan in the Adarsh society scam case, the Governor has stated, “Having considered the matter from all angles, the entire papers and documents, I do not find that even a prima facie case is made out and hence the request of the CBI for sanction to prosecute under Section 197 of the CrPC is liable to be rejected and, therefore, I am hereby constrained to refuse the same”.
“…. the CBI has not been able to collect/produce any evidence at all, leave aside the evidence that would prima-facie disclose even a grain of truth, in this regard. No prima facie case, therefore, exits for this allegation at all,” the Governor pointed out.
Rejecting the allegation of “quid pro quo” made against Chavan that he had allotted flats to his three close relatives in the controversial building in lieu of concessions doled to the Adarshg society, the Governor averred in his order that no document or oral evidence of any witness contained “any evidence whatsoever to even prima facie show that there is a nexus of even so that the proposal of quid pro quo was the brain child of Chavan”.