Former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan found himself in the dock yet again on Wednesday, as the Bombay High Court rejected the CBI’s petition seeking to drop his name from the charge sheet in the Adarsh housing society scam case.
“I am inclined to reject the petition and dismiss it,” Justice Ml Tahilyani said in a one-line order. Justice Tahilyani, who is currently presiding over a Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court, gave his ruling through video-conference. The Judge is expected to pronounce a detailed order in the coming days.
Though the court has ordered the restoration of Chavan’s name as one of the accused in the Adarsh scam charge sheet, his trial will not begin immediately, considering that the Judge has stayed the execution of his order for four weeks to facilitate the CBI to file an appeal against the order in a higher court.
The Judge stayed the order, after CBI counsel Hiten Venegaonkar made a prayer to that effect. "The plea for a stay on the order is being granted as CBI wants to file an appeal," the Judge said. The judge also rejected an intervention application filed by social activist Ketan Tirodkar opposing the CBI's plea to drop Chavan's name from the charge sheet the Adarsh scam case, after upholding the investigating agency's contention that the applicant had no locus standi in the case.
The Judge, however, said that he would go through the Supreme Court judgement cited by Tirodkar that a gubernatorial sanction was not required when charge sheet had already been filed against an accused.
Earlier this year, the CBI moved the High Court challenging the trial court’s order of January 18, 2014 rejecting its application to drop Chavan’s name from the list of accused in the Adarsh housing society scam case. Subsequently on August 7, Justice Sadhana Jadhav of the high court passed an interim order staying the former Chief Minister’s prosecution.
Chavan, it may be recalled, had resigned as the Chief Minister on November 9, 2010, following the expose of the Adarsh society scam.
In its voluminous charge-sheet filed against him and 12 others in the Adarsh scam case before the special court on July 4, 2012, the CBI had formally charged Chavan with having conspired with three prime scam accused, that he, in his capacity as the Revenue Minister in year 2000, had “proposed” to the society’s managing committee to induct civilians as members in the Adarsh building with the "ulterior motive" of facilitating flat allotments to his relatives.
The CBI had also charged that Chavan – during his tenure as the Chief Minister in July 2009 – gave the Adarsh society a concession of 15 per cent Recreation Ground (RG) which had not been allowed by the previous Government. “In turn, Chavan got membership for his close relatives and thus abused his official position and favoured (Adarsh) society”, the charge-sheet had stated.
The CBI’s charge was that her he had allotted flats to his (now late) mother-in-law Bhagwati Manoharlal Sharma and two of his relatives Seema Vinod Sharma and Madanlal Milkiram Sharma in the 31-storey Adarsh building at Colaba in south Mumbai in lieu of the favours he had done to the controversial society.
Among other things, the charge-sheet clearly stated that “Shri Ashok Chavan while functioning as the Revenue Minster of Government of Maharashtra during the year 2000 became a member of the criminal conspiracy with accused RC Thakur, Brig Madan Mohan Wachu and Khanhailala Gidwani in pursuance to the same, he proposed to included the civilians as members in the society with the ulterior motive to make his relatives as members in the society”.
On his part, Chavan subsequently challenged the CBI’s move to include his name as an accused in the charge sheet on the ground that no sanction for prosecution had been obtained from the Governor. The CBI maintained that since he was a former Chief Minister at the time of being charge-sheeted, gubernatorial approval was not required.
However, the court directed the CBI to get sanction for Chavan's prosecution from the Governor. After the CBI approached the then Governor K Sankaranarayanan for sanction for Chavan’s prosecution in the Adarsh scam case, the latter refused to grant sanction to the investigating agency.
In an order rejecting the CBI’s plea for sanction to prosecute Chavan in the Adarsh society scam case, Governor Sankaranarayanan had 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".
After the trial court rejected the CBI’s plea for dropping Chavan’s name from the Adarsh scam charge sheet – made on the basis of the rejection of its plea made to the Governor for sanction of Chavan’s prosecution, the investigating agency on March 26 moved the High Court challenging the trial court order rejecting the former Chief Minister’s name from the charge sheet.