The Supreme Court refused to direct the CBI to probe the alleged disproportionate assets case against Sikkim chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling.
In a major relief to corrupt politicians, the Supreme Court (SC) held on Thursday that it could not order a CBI probe into allegations of amassing wealth beyond their known sources of income.
The judgment could do wonders for politicians such as Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati, her political adversary and former CM Mulayam Singh Yadav and former Bihar chief minister and RJD chief Lalu Prasad, who have been haunted by petitions before SC seeking CBI probes into certain allegations.
“This court cannot sit in judgment over whether investigations should be launched against politicians for alleged acts of corruption,” a bench of chief justice KG Balakrishnan and justices P Sathasivam and JM Panchal said, dismissing a four-year-old petition by Kunga Nima Lepcha.
The Congress worker had sought a CBI probe against Sikkim chief minister Pawan Chamling, who is also president of Sikkim Democratic Front, and 21 members of his family, including two wives, four sons, a daughter, four brothers, six sisters-in-law, father-in-law and three brothers-in-law.
While filing nomination papers from the Damthang constituency in 2004, Chamling had declared assets worth Rs4.76 crore, but the petitioner claimed the true worth of his assets was Rs25 crore.
Lepcha said the state government misappropriated Rs15.38 crore from the public exchequer through the Sikkim Power Development Corporation.
He submitted information obtained from the Central Information
Commission under RTI in support.
SC had recently held that high courts and the apex court could order a CBI probe without waiting for the government’s nod in cases of alleged violation of the right to equality, life and liberty. But on Thursday, it made a slight deviation by pointing out that “clearly, the alleged acts of misappropriation from the public exchequer cannot be automatically equated with a violation of the guarantee of ‘equal protection before the law’”.
HC or SC can only “play a corrective role” to ensure that the integrity of the investigation is not compromised.
However, it is not viable for the court concerned to order initiation of an investigation, SC said. That function clearly lies in the domain of the executive and it is up to the investigating agencies to decide whether the material produced before them provides a sufficient basis to launch a probe, it added.
Appreciating the general perception that efforts to uncover alleged acts of corruption by men in power could be obstructed by “entrenched interests”, SC said Lepcha could directly move the authorities concerned and if he failed, he could go to Sikkim high court.
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