Former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami and eight other eminent citizens on Saturday filed a PIl in the Delhi High Court challenging appointment of Shashi Kant Sharma as CAG.
The petition was filed afresh as a SC bench on July 15 refused to hear it saying, “the HC is equally equipped to deal with the matter.” Now, a bench headed by Acting Chief Justice of Delhi High Court BD Ahmed is likely to hear the PIl on July 24. The PIl, filed by lawyer Prashant Bhushan, has sought setting aside of Sharma's appointment contending that it was made arbitrarily and “without any system for selection, without any selection committee, any criteria, any evaluation and without any transparency”.
The petitioners also included former Chiefs of Naval Staff Admiral RH Tahiliani and l Ramdas, former Deputy CAG BP Mathur, Kamal Kant Jaswal, Ramaswamy R Iyer, EAS Sarma, all former secretaries of various Government ministries, former Indian Audits and Accounts Service officer S Krishnan and former IAS officer MG Devasahayam.
One of the grounds raised in the PIl was that during his tenure as the DG (Acquisitions) or as the Defence Secretary, Sharma cleared several major defence purchases some of which have turned out to be a source of embarrassment to the Centre. The defence deals referred to in the petition include procurement of 12 VVIP choppers from Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland for the Indian Air Force at a cost of Rs 3,500 crore, which according to Italian investigators involved alleged kickbacks of at least Rs 350 crore. The controversial Tatra truck deal was also cleared by Sharma, it said.
It has also sought a direction to the Centre to “frame a transparent selection procedure based on definite criteria and constitute a broad-based non-partisan selection committee, which after calling for applications and nominations would recommend the most suitable person for appointment as CAG”.