Supreme Court’s notice to Karnataka, DK Shivakumar on CBI plea against withdrawal of consent by state govt

The Supreme Court on Friday sought response from the Karnataka government and Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar on a plea filed by CBI challenging the state government’s decision to withdraw its consent to the probe agency for investigating a disproportionate assets (DA) case against the Congress leader. A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Ujjal Bhuyan issued notice to Shivakumar and the state government while seeking their replies on the plea.

The current Karnataka cabinet headed by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on November 23, 2023, held the previous BJP government’s 2019 move to give consent to the CBI to investigate the DA case against Shivakumar was not in accordance with law and decided to withdraw the sanction as a result.

On August 29, the Karnataka High Court held as “non-maintainable” a petition filed by the CBI and a BJP MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal challenging the Congress government’s decision to withdraw the consent.

Patil, however, challenged the high court order in the top court which sought responses from Shivakumar and the state government.

On September 17, the same bench had issued notices to Shivakumar and the state government on the plea filed by Patil. On August 29, the high court had dismissed the plea, which also challenged the state government’s December 26, 2023 order referring the Rs 74.93 crore DA case to the Lokayukta for investigation. The CBI had alleged that Shivakumar amassed assets disproportionate to his known sources of income between 2013 and 2018. He was a minister in the previous Congress government during this period.

The CBI registered the DA case against Shivakumar on October 3, 2020, based on the consent given by the BJP government on September 25, 2019, following a reference by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to investigate corruption charges emerging from an income tax investigation.

The BJP government subsequently granted sanction to the CBI to prosecute Shivakumar.

The politician was arrested by the ED in September 2019 on the basis of alleged money-laundering charges stemming from an Income-Tax department investigation against him between 2017 and 2019. He was released on bail in the ED case in October, 2019.

On March 5, the top court, quashed the money laundering case against Shivakumar saying it must be linked to the scheduled offence.