HYDERABAD: The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a Special Leave Petition (SLP) filed by former minister Nagam Janardhan Reddy alleging financial irregularities in the Palamuru-Rangareddy Lift Irrigation Scheme (PRLIS).
A bench, comprising justices BV Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma, rejected the SLP, finding no merit to interfere with a 2018 order of the Telangana High Court, which had earlier dismissed Janardhan Reddy’s Public Interest Litigation (PIL).
The bench noted that four other cases filed by the former minister on the same project had been either dismissed or disposed of, with no appeals pending. It also recorded that the Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC), acting on a complaint from Janardhan Reddy, had found the allegations unsubstantiated.
The judges questioned senior counsel Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the former minister, on how a writ petition could seek to declare revision of project rates as fraudulent. Bhushan urged the court to focus instead on the plea for a CBI probe into the alleged fraud.
Justice Nagarathna remarked that revising rates could be an exercise of the state’s commercial discretion and questioned how courts could direct a CBI investigation into such matters. “Courts cannot monitor every action of the state,” she said.
Senior counsel and former attorney general Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd (MEIL), objected to the maintainability of the SLP. He told the court that the former minister had filed multiple complaints over a decade across forums, including the Telangana High Court and CVC, amounting to harassment. Rohatgi also pointed to the CVC’s finding that the allegations lacked substance.
After hearing both sides, the bench dismissed the SLP, observing that the Telangana High Court had exercised its discretion appropriately in declining to order a CBI probe. “We find that the high court was justified in declining to refer the case to the CBI,” the bench held.