BENGALURU: Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot is a competent authority, but not a preliminary inquiry officer, to give sanction to prosecute Chief Minister Siddaramaiah even before conducting a preliminary inquiry over the alleged illegal allotment of 14 compensatory sites to his wife Parvathy BM by the Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA), argued Advocate General K Shashikiran Shetty before the Karnataka High Court on Monday.
Arguing on behalf of the state government before Justice M Nagaprasanna, who is hearing a petition filed by Siddaramaiah challenging the governor’s sanction, Shetty submitted that the governor should have restrained from exercising his discretionary powers under Article 163 and referred the complaint to an investigating agency to conduct a preliminary investigation before granting sanction. If the preliminary investigation found any prima facie case, then the probe report should have been considered along with the complaint filed to grant sanction as required under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, he said.
He contended that the governor had to seek an investigation report after perusing the complaint, instead of issuing a show-cause notice to the chief minister. This procedure is as per the judgments of the high court, the supreme court in Lalit Kumar’s case and the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) issued by the central government. But it was not followed and the governor’s action defeats the very purpose of Section 17A. The impugned sanction order has to go, he argued.
The court orally observed that if the investigation is already done before granting sanction, then what approval is to be given. “You are trying to blow hot and cold. If your submission is accepted, even after following Section 17A, the same thing will happen as what was done only by the impugned order,” the court told the AG.
Going by the judgments in the Ashoka case by the high court and the SOP, the governor is a competent authority and not a preliminary inquiry officer. He has to act as per the aid and advice of the council of ministers. The reasons for sanctioning should be in the order and on the file of the case, Shetty told the court.
Senior advocate Lakshmi Iyengar, arguing for complainant Snehamayi Krishna, said that when denotification, conversion of land and distribution of compensatory sites were done, Siddaramaiah was in power as deputy chief minister or chief minister or MLA, from 2004 to 2022. She alleged that the sites were registered in Parvathy’s name at the Government Guest House in Mysuru and she did not go to the sub-registrar’s office which is mandatory. Every single transaction has been done at the behest of the CM, she argued.
Further hearing in the case was adjourned to September 12 for submission by senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi on behalf of the chief minister.