The law finally caught up with former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan on Thursday as Maharashtra Governor Vidyasagar Rao granted sanction to the Central Bureau of Investigation to prosecute the senior Congress leader in the Adarsh Co-operative Housing Society scam.
Based on a communication from the CBI seeking permission for Chavan’s indictment and a subsequent recommendation to that effect by the State Cabinet, the Governor gave a formal go-ahead to the agency to prosecute the former CM under Section 197 of CrPc for offences registered under Section 120-B (conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of IPC in the scam.
Dubbing the move to grant permission to prosecute him as an act of “political vendetta”, Chavan said the action was part of a larger conspiracy hatched by the BJP-led Government to frame in false cases and defame Congress leaders across the country.
“The previous Governor K Sankaranarayanan had declined sanction for my prosecution in the case after legal consultations. It is illegal on the part of the CBI to have sought permission once again from the new Governor. Nowhere is there any provision that allows the CBI to seek permission from the Governor for the second time. I will fight this out legally,” Chavan said.
Rejecting Chavan’s charge of “political vendetta”, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis defended the Governor’s decision and said he granted permission on the basis of advice given by the State Advocate-General who had emphatically said that “such permission should be and could be granted”.
“The CBI’s stand is that after the last Governor rejected permission, a new set of facts had come to light which clearly proved that he gave permission for construction of the building and his close relatives got flats (in the Adarsh housing society). Therefore the CBI once again asked the Governor permission to prosecute Chavan,” Fadnavis said.
On his part, Governor Rao has stated that he granted sanction on the basis of “additional or fresh material, namely, the report of Justice Patil Commission of Enquiry and the observations made by the Bombay High Court on March 4, 2015.”
While indicting Chavan in its report, the two-member Commission of Inquiry, comprising of retired Bombay High Court Judge Patil and retired Chief Secretary of Maharashtra P Subramanyam, had stated among other things: “Taking all these facts into consideration, we are of the opinion that there is certainly a nexus between the acts of Ashok Chavan and the benefit derived by his close relatives in the form of membership in the Adarsh society. That clearly indicates the grant of requisite permissions/clearances of the file of Adarsh society was by quid pro quo by Ashok Chavan”.
Chavan, it may be recalled, had resigned as the Chief Minister on November 9, 2010, following the expose of the Adarsh society scam.