BENGALURU: The Congress petition in the Assembly against Upa Lokayukta Subhash B Adi owes its origins to a complaint by another Upa Lokayukta. In July, a teary Justice S B Majage, then one of two Upa Lokayuktas in Karnataka, had accused Adi of trampling on his jurisdiction.
Congress MLAs have signed a petition seeking Adi’s removal, and submitted it to Assembly Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa.
In 2014, Adi had recommended to the government dropping of charges against Dr Sheela Patil of Hubli.
She had been accused of diverting medicine from a government hospital to a private clinic.
On the last day of his tenure, Majage had told the media, “Justice Adi took the file without my notice and filed a report favouring her. This came to my notice when the file was placed before me, and I was asked for my consent to close the case.’’
Later, Sheela Patil resigned from government service and started a private practice, Majage had said, seeking an inquiry into Adi’s ‘overstepping’ his bounds.
Adi had rubbished the allegations and told reporters Majage had sent the file to him. “I wrote to the government on the basis of a report by the Director of Lokayukta (Vigilance), who had dropped the charges against Dr Sheela as they had not been proved,’’ he had said.