A division bench of the High Court of Karnataka is set to hear the final arguments on Wednesday on the appeal by Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar against the sanction given to the CBI by the previous BJP government to prosecute him in a disproportionate assets case. Additional Solicitor General S V Raju, on behalf of the CBI, and senior counsel Uday Holla, on behalf of Shivakumar, are expected to present arguments before Chief Justice Prasanna B Varale and Justice Krishna S Dixit.
Meanwhile, BJP leader and Vijayapura MLA Basangouda Patil Yatnal has filed an intervening application (IA) in the appeal, over the decision of the state cabinet to withdraw consent given to the CBI for the investigation against Shivakumar, who is also the Congress state unit president. The “present intervening application is filed in order to point out how the entire state machinery is being involved in scuttling the investigation,” the application states.
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Yatnal states in his application that the single judge in his judgment rejecting Shivakumar’s petition had earlier recorded that “90 per cent of the investigation is complete”. Therefore, “the decision of the state cabinet is completely against public interest and shocks public conscience.” The IA seeks to get the government’s withdrawal of consent to be treated as “void”.
The Karnataka cabinet headed by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday deemed the previous BJP government’s move to consent to a CBI investigation into the DA case against Shivakumar as not being in accordance with the law — and therefore decided to withdraw the sanction given to the central agency.
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A single judge bench had earlier dismissed Shivakumar’s petition challenging the sanction of September 25, 2019 granted by the government to prosecute him. He then challenged it before the division bench, which had stayed the single judge order. The CBI had filed an application for vacation of this stay. The CBI also approached the Supreme Court which directed the HC to hear the application filed by the CBI seeking vacation of stay preferably within two weeks.
Based on the Income Tax Department’s search operations in the home and offices of Shivakumar in 2017, the Enforcement Directorate started its own probe against him. Based on the ED investigation, the CBI sought sanction from the state government to file an FIR against him. The state government had given the sanction on September 25, 2019. The CBI had filed an FIR against him on October 3, 2020.
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