CBI moves Supreme Court against Karnataka decision to withdraw consent to probe Dy CM Shivakumar
The Congress government has withdrawn the consent given by the BJP government in 2019 to probe allegations of disproportionate assets against D K Shivakumar, stating that the matter was referred to CBI even before an FIR was registered.
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The Congress party swept all the three assembly constituencies in Karnataka, namely Channapatna, Sandur and Shiggaon, which went for bypolls. (File Photo)The Central Bureau of Investigation has approached the Supreme Court against the Karnataka Government’s decision to withdraw consent to investigate a corruption case against Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar.
Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta conveyed this to a bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan when a plea filed by Karnataka BJP leader Basanagouda R Patil came up before it. After Mehta urged the court to hear both matters together, the bench adjourned the hearing by four weeks.
The Karnataka High Court on August 29 dismissed as “non-maintainable” the CBI’s plea challenging the Congress government’s November 28, 2023, decision to withdraw consent to investigate alleged illegal assets of Shivakumar, and a December 26, 2023, order to refer the matter to the Lokayukta for an inquiry.
The high court said in a 67-page judgment that the matters raised in the pleas have to be addressed by the Supreme Court, which is seized of similar issues in other petitions.
The CBI registered a disproportionate assets case against Shivakumar on October 3, 2020, based on consent given by the then BJP government following a reference from the Enforcement Directorate to investigate corruption charges that emerged in an Income Tax Department inquiry.
The Congress government, which came to power in May 2023, withdrew the consent given in 2019 to the CBI to investigate allegations of disproportionate assets against Shivakumar. The Congress has said the case was referred to the CBI in 2019 even before an FIR was registered in 2020.
The CBI has alleged that Shivakumar amassed Rs 74.93 crore, disproportionate to his known sources of income from April 2013 to April 2018, when he was the energy minister in a previous Congress government in the state.
Shivakumar was arrested by the ED in September 2019 on the basis of money-laundering charges that emerged from the income tax inquiry against the state Congress chief between 2017 and 2019. He was released on bail in the ED case in October 2019.
On March 5, the Supreme Court quashed the ED proceedings against Shivakumar, citing its judgment of November 29, 2023, in the Pavana Dibbur case, where it ruled that money-laundering proceedings can be initiated only in the event of the laundered funds being linked to a major or scheduled crime.
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