Order reserved on Ashok Chavan plea over Adarsh prosecution

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Thursday reserved the order on the petition filed by former chief minister of Maharashtra Ashok Chavan, challenging governor Vidyasagar Rao’s decision of granting permission to prosecute Chavan in the Adarsh society scam. The court reserved the order after Chavan’s lawyers and CBI completed their arguments.

The CBI, probing the scam, had accused Chavan of approving an additional floor space index (FSI) for the Adarsh society and accepting two flats for his relatives in return when he was the chief minister of the state between December 2008 and November 2010. The central agency has also accused him of illegally approving, as revenue minister earlier, allotment of 40 per cent of the flats to civilians even though the society was originally meant for defence personnel.

In February 2016, the governor had granted sanction to prosecute Chavan under the relevant sections of IPC related to criminal conspiracy and cheating, besides the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Chavan challenged this decision in the high court terming the decision as arbitrary, illegal and unjust. He alleged that the sanction was granted with “malafied intention”.

Senior counsel Amit Desai on his behalf argued before the division bench of Justice Ranjit More and Justice Sadhana Jadhav that the governor’s order was politically motivated and biased. He put before the court the December 2013 order of the then Governor of Maharashtra K. Sankaranarayanan, who had refused to grant sanction to prosecute Chavan. 

Following this, even the CBI had filed an application before the trial court in 2014 seeking deletion of Chavan’s name from the list of accused. However, the court rejected this plea and hence the agency approached the high court but the HC also dismissed it. Later, when the BJP came to power, the CBI sought a review of the 2013 decision and sanction was granted this time.