CBI moves SC against withdrawal of consent by K’taka govt to probe case against DK Shivakumar
New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation has moved the Supreme Court challenging the Karnataka government’s decision to withdraw its consent to the probe agency for investigating a disproportionate assets case against Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar.
The present Karnataka ministry under Chief Minister Siddaramaiah decided on November 23, 2023, that the BJP regime’s decision to permit the CBI to probe the DA case against Shivakumar in 2019 was illegal and thus withdrew the sanction.
The Karnataka High Court on August 29 termed the petition filed by the CBI and BJP MLA Babangida Patil Yarnall against the Congress government’s decision to withdraw its consent as “non-maintainable.”
However, Patil approached the top court challenging the Karnataka High Court order, and the top court sought responses from Shivakumar and the state government.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan issued notices to Shivakumar and the state government on the plea filed by Patil on September 17.
The high court disposed of the plea on August 29, challenging the state government’s December 26, 2023 order referring the case of over ₹74.93 crore DA to Lokayukta for investigation.
The CBI alleged that Shivakumar had accumulated assets worth over Rs 2.83 crore between 2013 and 2018, which was disproportionate to his known sources of income. He was a minister in the erstwhile Congress government during this period.
On October 3, 2020, the CBI registered a DA case against Shivakumar based on the consent given by the BJP government on September 25, 2019, following a reference by the Enforcement Directorate to probe corruption charges surfacing from an income-tax investigation.
The BJP government later granted sanction to the CBI to prosecute Shivakumar.
The ED arrested a politician in September 2019 based on alleged money-laundering charges from an Income-Tax department investigation against him between 2017 and 2019. He was released on bail in the ED case in October 2019.
