A day after the Maharashtra Government withdrew its “general consent” to the CBI to investigate cases in the State, the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) constituents — NCP and Shiv Sena — on Thursday justified the consent withdrawal move by charging that the Narendra Modi Government was “misusing” the Central investigating agency in non-BJP-ruled State for political reasons.
Talking to media persons here, State Home Minister and NCP leader Anil Deshmukh attributed his government’s decision to withdraw its “general consent” to the CBI to investigate cases in the state to the ruling BJP-led Union government’s frequent “misuse” of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act to investigate cases as it happened in the Sushant Singh Rajput death case.
“There is a debate among the people that the BJP-led government at the Centre misuses the CBI for political reasons. At the same time we are seeing that at a time when the Mumbai police are investigating the TRP rating fraud case, a case gets registered in Uttar Pradesh and the same case gets transferred to the Centre. Hence, in order to ensure that the CBI is not misused for political reasons, we have decided to withdraw consent to investigate cases in Maharashtra,” Deshmukh said.
Deshmukh, who had in the past made no bones about his displeasure over the CBI taking over the investigations Sushant Singh Raput death from the Mumbai police, said that the central agency would now have to approach the state government and take prior permission from it to investigate cases in the state.
“The Mumbai police were investigating the Sushant Singh Rajput death case. But, the SSR case came to be handed over to the CBI. The same thing would have happened in the case of the TRP ratings fraud case. And the same vested interests would have defamed the Mumbai and Maharashtra police in a similar manner they did in the case of Sushant Singh Rajput case, “ Deshmukh said.
In a related development, Shiv Sena spokesperson and MP Sanjay Raut charged that the Narendra Modi government “misused” its investigation machinery in states where the BJP is not in power. “Hence, we have decided to withdraw general consent to the CBI to investigate cases in Maharashtra.
The CBI will now have to take prior permission from the Maharashtra government before it investigates cases in our State”.
“We are Maharashtra.... Be it CBI or ED, the investigation agencies will have some power to investigate cases in our state.... what we are witnessing is misuse by central investigation agencies in the Opposition parties-led states. If someone tries to misuse its power in Opposition-ruled states to harass and defame people there, we have no alternative but we have had to take a decision to protect the powers of the state,” Raut said.